The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol superior a measure Monday to refer former Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino to the Justice Department for legal contempt of Congress charges.
The committee voted 9-0 to ship the advice to the House. The panel consists of seven Democrats and two Republicans, who’re collaborating with out the approval of GOP management.
The panel’s vote paves the best way for the House to vote on whether or not the pair ought to be referred to the Justice Department for a misdemeanor that carries as much as a 12 months in jail and fines as much as $100,000.
Navarro, a commerce adviser through the Trump administration, and Scavino, who served as White House deputy chief of workers, have defied subpoenas from the committee demanding they testify and flip over paperwork related to final 12 months’s assault that disrupted the 2020 electoral vote depend throughout a joint session of Congress.
According to a report issued by the committee Sunday, each Navarro and Scavino have cited “executive privilege” as their purpose for not cooperating with the panel, arguing solely former President Donald Trump can waive that privilege despite the fact that President Joe Biden already has.
The committee stated the former aides “played key roles in the ex-president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.”
Specifically, the panel stated Navarro has publicly boasted about plans to upend the 2020 election outcomes, and even printed a e book final 12 months during which he referred to the plan because the ‘‘Green Bay Sweep.’’ He stated “it was designed as the ‘last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.’’’
In detailing the plan, Navarro said the goal was to have members lawmakers on Capitol Hill debate the electoral results from six swing, with the hope of having Congress declare the results to be in dispute. That would set the stage for the House to select the president based on each congressional delegation getting one vote. Since Republicans controlled more state delegations than Democrats, Navarro’s plan assumed that Trump would receive a second term in office.
Navarro has said that Trump was “on board with the technique,” along with more than 100 members of Congress, according to the committee’s report.
Navarro did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Scavino, who ran Trump’s social media, was one of the first people subpoenaed by the committee last year. The panel said Scavino “labored with President Trump as a part of the then-President’s marketing campaign to reverse the election outcomes. This marketing campaign included, amongst different issues, spreading false information by way of social media relating to alleged election fraud and recruiting a crowd to Washington for the occasions of January sixth.”
The former deputy chief of staff also “reportedly attended a number of conferences with the president during which challenges to the election had been mentioned. Mr. Scavino additionally tracked social media on behalf of President Trump, and he did so at a time when websites reportedly frequented by Mr. Scavino recommended the potential of violence on January sixth,” the committee’s report said.
The panel added that Scavino also did work for Trump’s presidential campaign and “continued to take action after the 2020 election, selling actions designed to reverse the end result of a misplaced election.”
“Mr. Scavino labored immediately with President Trump to unfold President Trump’s false message that the election was stolen, and to recruit Americans to come back to Washington with the false promise that January sixth could be a possibility to ‘take again their nation,'” committee vice chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Monday shortly before the vote. “The Committee has many questions for Mr. Scavino about his political social media work for President Trump, together with his interactions with an internet discussion board referred to as ‘The Donald’ and with Qanon, a weird and harmful cult.”
Scavino’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The House has already voted on criminal referrals for two other officials who defied the panel’s subpoenas — former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The Justice Department acted on the Bannon recommendation, which it does not always do. Bannon has been charged with two counts of contempt. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in July.
The Justice Department has not acted on the referral against Meadows, which the House passed in December.
Monday night’s committee vote came just hours after a federal judge in California found in a civil case involving Trump-allied lawyer John Eastman’s emails “that it’s extra doubtless than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to impede the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” and ordered Eastman to turn over 101 emails to the House panel.
Following Monday’s vote, the committee was expected to have a closed session meeting to discuss whether members should seek to interview Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, over text messages between her and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in which she urged him to push Trump to fight the election results.
Two sources told NBC on Monday that the committee is leaning toward calling Ginni Thomas in for an interview, but will discuss the matter in full during Monday night’s closed session.
Later this week, the panel is scheduled to interview former top Trump adviser Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law, three sources confirmed to NBC News.
Kushner’s scheduled look on Thursday was first reported by ABC News.
Jonathan Allen, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Haley Talbot and Zoë Richards contributed.