The contempt of Congress trial against Peter Navarro started in earnest Wednesday morning, with dueling opening statements from prosecutors and the defense.
The former White House trade adviser “acted as if he was above the law,” Justice Department attorney John Crabb told the jury. “But he is not above the law. No one is.”
Navarro’s attorney countered that prosecutors’ case is like a movie that doesn’t live up to the trailer.
“Why open their case with a history of George Washington to Adams to Obama to Trump?” Navarro attorney Stanley Woodward told the jury, referencing a part of the prosecutors’ opening statement that discussed the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
“This trailer is like one of those movies where you get nothing after the preview,” Woodward said.
The trial is expected to be a short one, and already the proceedings have moved briskly. Just a handful of witnesses are expected to take the stand and it’s possible the case will go to jury deliberations by the end of Wednesday.
While previewing what would be a “simple case” for the jury, Crabb said in the government’s opening statement that it was an “important” one.
The United States was a “nation of laws,” Crabb said, and “our system doesn’t work” if people think they are above the law or don’t comply with it.
Crabb walked the jury through the highlights of evidence that, he said, will show that Navarro ignored a February 2022 subpoena issued by the House select committee tasked with investigating the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol.
“Congress had information that Mr. Navarro had communications and documents, and perhaps knew things about why the attack on the Capitol happened,” Crabb said.
“Why did Congress think this? Because Mr. Navarro said so,” the prosecutor added, pointing to public statements Navarro made, including on podcast and television, discussing his theories about the supposed election fraud in 2020.
The subpoena was “not voluntary” and “not an invitation” but a legal “requirement,” Crabb stressed.
Woodward, in his opening for the defense, said that “much” of the evidence in the case “was not in dispute,” and that the defense agrees that the House January 6 select committee issued a subpoena to Navarro and that he accepted that subpoena.
“The evidence in this case will not show that Dr. Navarro was willful in his failure to comply,” Woodward said, alluding to one of the elements of the contempt charge the government will need to prove.
Woodward previewed that the jury would be presented with evidence that the committee did not contact former President Donald Trump to negotiate privilege issues, as Navarro suggested in response to the subpoena.
Navarro has been dealt a series of pre-trial rulings that severely limited the defense arguments he could put forward, including with a decision from US District Judge Amit Mehta that concluded that Trump did not make a valid assertion of privilege or immunity that precluded the Justice Department from prosecuting him for contempt.
If Navarro is convicted, he and his lawyers have signaled that they would like to litigate that and other issues on appeal.
After the opening statements were finished Wednesday morning, David Buckley, the former staff director of the House committee and a witness for the government, took the stand. He is testifying about how and why the House select committee was set up.
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