Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro is launching legal action against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the January 6 committee, claiming that they have no legal right to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to give evidence.
He faces possible criminal charges after the House last month voted to forward the case to the Department of Justice.
But in an 88-page legal filing shared with DailyMail.com, Navarro argues that President Joe Biden had no authority to waive former President Donald Trump’s executive privilege or his former adviser’s ‘testimonial immunity.’
And he said the courts must intervene to protect the separation of powers, and ensure that lawmakers were not getting into matters of justice.
‘Repeated abuses by partisans and political score settlers like those on the Committee have institutionalized a partisan weaponization of Congress’ investigatory powers that now threatens the delicate balance and separation of powers between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of our government,’ he says in a filing to be lodged at the District of Columbia district court.
Navarro is among those of Trump’s closest allies who have refused to give testimony or hand over documents to the January 6 committee.
Last month, the House voted 220 to 203 – mostly along party lines – calling for prosecutions of Navarro, a trade adviser to Trump, and Scavino, former deputy chief of staff.
‘We have two people who are flagrantly, brazenly defying the authority of the House of Representatives of the United States,’ Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the committee, said at the time.
Now Navarro is asking for a jury trial to overturn the subpoena, the report and the contempt of Congress vote on the grounds that lawmakers are acting as a branch of the judiciary.
‘The committee’s members along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a more than five year period have been engaged in a “repeatable strategic game” of “gotcha” and punishment that threatens to reduce the institutions of executive privilege and testimonial immunity to ping pong balls of partisan politics,’ he says.
‘In this strategic ping pong game, whichever party controls both the House of Representatives and White House will effectively weaponize Congress’s investigatory powers in ways designed to: (1) punish political rivals and (2) deny individuals the opportunity to effectively run for political office or serve in government.’
This is an excerpt from Daily Mail.
