(PartiallyPolitics.com) Former President Donald Trump is making an effort to stop the prosecution of former White House adviser Peter Navarro after the latter failed to comply with a House committee subpoena.
Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran filed a letter in federal court claiming that executive privilege had been asserted in regard to that subpoena.
Peter Navarro is now set to appear in court for contempt of Congress in a week. Corcoran points out that the information that the White House committee investigating January 6 was trying to ascertain related to discussions that Trump and Navarro had had on a variety of topics that related to the country’s national security.
In the letter, Corcoran wrote that President Trump considers these discussions as well as any other discussions with senior aides to be protected. He added that Navarro was obliged to comply with the protection that the executive privilege provided the former President.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta refused to dismiss the charges being brought against Navarro as she had claimed that there was not enough evidence to support the claim that executive privilege had been asserted by Trump. This allowed the court case to proceed.
In her statement, Mehta had written that as there is no proof it would be hard for the court to determine whether there was “a formal invocation of privilege by the former President.” Trump’s latest letter is unlikely to change the outcome of Mehta’s earlier decision, especially as Navarro had not mentioned previously that Trump had explicitly asserted executive privilege during the meeting.
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