Former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro could be held in contempt of court if he doesn’t turn over to emails he has that are presidential records, a federal judge said on Tuesday.
The Justice Department sued Navarro more than a year ago, trying to reclaim federal records they said he wrongfully kept after leaving the government. Navarro lost the lawsuit in DC’s federal court last spring, but the case has dragged on without him providing all of the records.
“It is clear that Defendant continues to possess Presidential records that have not been produced to their rightful owner, the United States,” federal district Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 6-page opinion on Tuesday.
A magistrate judge will now be assigned to make sure Navarro returns government records to the federal government, and Kollar-Kotelly told Navarro she would look further at whether he should be held in criminal contempt of court. Navarro now must work through about 600 records to determine if they should be turned over to the federal government as presidential communications, the judge said.
The case captures a snippet of the presidential records debate that former President Donald Trump is trying to wage on a larger stage in his criminal case. Trump, like Navarro, has repeatedly tried to claim records of his are personal, and not property of the federal government.
But in Navarro’s lawsuit, Kollar-Kotelly delved into her interpretation of the presidential records law, drawing a clear line between official papers from a presidential administration and personal documents.
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