Peter Navarro lost his appeal on Tuesday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
A three-judge panel rejected Navarro’s argument that former President Donald Trump had invoked executive privilege to shield him from providing documents and testimony to the committee. The court found that Navarro had invoked the privilege unilaterally, without consulting Trump or anyone close to him.
Circuit Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the panel, noted that Navarro had asserted executive privilege within three minutes of learning that the committee intended to subpoena him and before he had even seen the subpoena’s content. “Navarro, in fact, asserted executive privilege within three minutes of learning that the Select Committee intended to subpoena him and before he had even seen the subpoena’s content,” Millett wrote, according to Courthouse News. “Navarro also concedes that he did not communicate with President Trump or anyone close to President Trump during those three minutes.”
Navarro, a former trade adviser to Trump, spent four months in prison in 2024 after a jury convicted him on two counts of contempt of Congress. The committee had subpoenaed him in early 2022, identifying him as one of the “political forces” behind the attack and seeking his testimony about his role in crafting the “Green Bay Sweep,” a scheme to use Trump loyalists in Congress to decertify swing states’ 2020 election results.
The ruling follows a similar precedent set in 2024, when the D.C. Circuit upheld Steve Bannon’s contempt conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the same committee. Bannon also claimed that Trump had invoked executive privilege on his behalf, but the court rejected that argument as well.
Millett wrote that the difference between Navarro’s case and Bannon’s was “vanishingly small,” noting that Navarro’s immediate assertion of privilege without consulting anyone “cuts against Navarro’s purported good-faith defense, not in favor of it.” She pointed out that Navarro had publicly discussed some of the information sought by the committee in his book and media appearances, undercutting his privilege claims.
The Justice Department declined to defend Navarro’s conviction at oral arguments in December 2025, stating that it “is no longer taking the same position as the prior administration in this case,” according to Courthouse News. The court declined the DOJ’s request to appoint an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, to defend the conviction.
Sources
- Courthouse News — provided the full opinion text, Millett’s reasoning on the three-minute executive privilege claim, details of Navarro’s 2024 prison sentence, and the DOJ’s decision to stop defending the conviction
- The Washington Post — reported the appeals court upheld Navarro’s convictions for defying the subpoena from the House January 6 committee
- Bloomberg Government News — confirmed Navarro lost his appeal and that executive privilege must be claimed by the president
- KTEN — reported the appeals court said Navarro had no documentation showing Trump told him to defy the subpoena
