U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered Navarro to return the records last March after the Justice Department filed a lawsuit claiming President Donald Trump’s trade and manufacturing policy adviser used least an unofficial email account for doing business with the government and had not copied the emails to an official account. or respond to the archivist’s request for return.
However, for months, Navarro’s defense has fought with prosecutors over whether about 600 emails constituted official or personal business, including some personal journal entries. In a six-page opinion released Tuesday, Kollar-Kotelly said her review of a sample of 50 emails and their attachments found that at least 24 percent, and potentially as many as 56 percent, of the files actually contributed to the exercise of presidential functions.
“It is clear that the defendant continues to possess presidential documents that have not been delivered to their rightful owner, the United States,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote, adding that if he were an agency responding to a request of public documents, “an error rate of 25%, especially when coupled with the expression ‘intransigen(ce)’ on the part of the producing party, is ‘unacceptably high’ and suggests that many documents were unduly withheld.”
Kollar-Kotelly said it was unclear what category some records fell into. But, she added, “just because it’s a journal entry doesn’t mean it’s a personnel record, especially since journal entries include work-related matters. Likewise, many of the documents related to the 2020 presidential election and its chaotic aftermath, but they were not automatically personal documents because they could have a direct connection or effect on the exercise of presidential duties, the president said. judge. wrote. The legal question is why Navarro prepared the documents and what he did with them.
Legal troubles are latest Navarro, 74, faces a four-month prison sentence for ignoring a subpoena from the House committee investigating January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Navarro, who claimed credit for designing a plan to overthrow the 2020 elections and keep Asset in office, appealed his conviction at trial last September before another federal judge on two counts criminal contempt of Congress.
Kollar-Kotelly gave Navarro until March 20 to review the 600 files and until March 21 to show why he should not face a contempt finding usually punishable by a fine, a district judge examining the files for him.
An attorney for Navarro declined to comment.
