The select committee of the House investigating January 6 bombing of the United States Capitol He voted unanimously Monday night to recommend that former Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino be considered in contempt of Congress for not cooperating with the citations.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson acknowledged in a statement Monday that Navarro, a former business adviser, and Scavino, a former deputy chief of staff and a member of the White House communications team, “are not family names.” , but said they are “so important to our research.”
“In short, these two men played a key role in the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” Thompson said. “The select committee summoned them for records and testimonies to learn more about their roles and what they knew.”
AP / Andrew Harnik, AP / Alex Brandon
Thompson said Scavino “accompanied us for months before making it clear that he believes he is above the law.” Navarro, Thompson said, shared “relevant details on television and podcasts in his own book,” but he “stopped us.”
Vice President Liz Cheney, one of the committee’s two Republicans, said Monday that the committee “has already defeated President Trump’s effort to hide certain White House records behind a shield of executive privileges.” conclusion should apply to Mr Scavino and Mr Navarro “.
“In the coming months, our committee will convene a series of hearings,” Cheney said. “The American people will listen to our fellow citizens who have shown fidelity to our constitution and the rule of law, who have refused to give in to pressure from President Trump.”
Monday’s vote comes after the committee released a 34-page report recommending charges of contempt on Sunday night.
“The contempt report released last night goes into that, but broadly speaking, Mr. Scavino and Mr. Navarro are making a similar excuse,” Thompson said. “They claim that the information we want from them is protected by the privilege of the executive.”
The committee referred the matter to the House, which is fully controlled by the Democrats, which will decide whether to schedule a vote on whether to move the matter to the Department of Justice.
Navarro, along with other Trump allies who have been cited, have said they cannot overturn Trump by invoking executive privilege. President Biden, for his part, has done just that rejected claims for executive privilege.
“My position remains that it is not my executive privilege to resign, and the committee should negotiate this matter with President Trump,” Navarro said in a statement. “If I relinquish the privilege, I will be happy to comply; but I see no effort on the part of the committee to clarify this matter with President Trump, who is in bad faith and in bad law.”
Scavino, who the committee noted had a dual role as a White House official and a key proponent of Trump’s stolen election theory on social media, was first cited in September for providing documents to the committee and attending in the depositions, along with the former head of the White House. staff Mark Meadows, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Pentagon chief of staff Kashyap Patel. The Sunday night report said Scavino first received a subpoena in Mar-a-Lago, but the committee had to issue a second subpoena in October after the first was challenged.
The committee is seeking information from Scavino because, according to Sunday’s report, he was “present at the November 2020 meetings where then-President Trump consulted with outside advisers on ways to challenge the results of the 2020 election.” and because they are “right.” to believe that Mr. Scavino was with then-President Trump on January 5 and 6 and was part of talks on plans to challenge, disrupt or impede official congressional proceedings. ”
The committee said Trump and Scavino spoke several times over the phone on Jan. 6 and alleged that Scavino may have had prior notice of the violence because it monitored the websites where the aggression was talked about. The report detailed Scavino’s activities on The_Donald subreddit and TheDonald.win.
Rejecting Scavino’s claims about executive privilege, Biden said it “does not extend to discussions related to non-governmental business or between private citizens.”
The committee also rejected Navarro’s claim for executive privilege, and wrote in the report that “the Selecto Committee does not request documents or testimony from Mr. Navarro related to his official duties as a federal official. “The official responsibilities of Mr. Navarro’s office included advising President Trump on the 2020 presidential election or the roles and responsibilities of Congress and the Vice President during the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress.”
The committee issued a subpoena in February to Navarro, who served as Trump’s business adviser, alleging that he had developed plans to change the outcome of the election. Instead of responding to the summons, the report said Navarro, “predicted that his interactions with the Selective Committee would be judged by the ‘Supreme Court, where this case is directed’.”
According to Sunday’s report, Navarro worked with “Bannon and others to develop and implement a plan to delay congressional certification and ultimately change the outcome of the November 2020 presidential election.”
The report also said that Navarro detailed in his November 2021 book “In Trump Time” this plan, called “Green Bay Sweep.” Navarro called this “the last and best opportunity to snatch an election stolen from the jaws of the Democrats’ deception.” In a later interview about the book, Navarro said Trump was “in line with the strategy.”
The Jan. 6 select committee has already formally recommended that the U.S. House formally refer Bannon and Meadows for contempt of Congress. The House, by a majority of votes that included nine Republicans, voted in favor of the remission.
Weeks later, the Justice Department charged Bannon, who was handed over to the authorities and pleaded not guilty. He is scheduled to stand trial in late July in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. His defense attorney told CBS News that the defense expects to file a motion to dismiss the indictment on April 8.
The Justice Department has not commented on the nature or results of its review of possible criminal charges against Meadows. The U.S. House of Representatives, with a two-vote majority that included only two Republicans, approved Meadows’ referral for possible office in mid-December. Three months later, no case has been filed yet.
Deputy Adam Kinzinger, one of the two Republicans on the committee, he told “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning that “he doesn’t trust Meadows to have delivered everything.”
“He was cooperating a little bit with us, and then, in an attempt to make Donald Trump happy, he stopped cooperating,” Kinzinger said. “We gave him a lot of space to come back and resume. He didn’t.”
Last week, CBS News campaign chief and campaign correspondent Robert Costa and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post won texts between Meadows and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, who also holds the January 6 committee of the House. In the texts, Ginni Thomas pushed Meadows to cancel the 2020 election.
Nikole Killion, Ellis Kim, Sara Cook and Zak Hudak contributed to this report.
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