WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday to hold two former top Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas from the committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The 220-203 vote sends the contempt resolution against ex-White House deputy chief of staff for communications Dan Scavino and former trade adviser Peter Navarro to Speaker Nancy Pelosi for referral to the Justice Department for possible prosecution The committee’s two GOP members, Vice Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, voted with all Democrats in favor of the action.
Scavino and Navarro are the third and fourth ex-advisers to former President Donald Trump to be held in contempt by Congress, amid ongoing legal battles over the authority of former presidents and their former aides to assert executive privilege as a shield from testifying to Congress.
“More than 800 Americans have come to testify before our committee,” Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the panel conducting the investigation, said on the House floor before the vote. “Four of them have categorically refused and blown off the subpoenas of the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Scavino and Navarro are defying the authority of the House “in order to avoid coming here to tell the truth,” he said.
There was no immediate comment Wednesday from lawyers for Navarro and Scavino on the House vote.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California argued that the contempt action against the two men “is about criminalizing dissent.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right. The riot on Jan. 6 was wrong. But Democrats’ reaction to trample American civil rights is also wrong,” McCarthy said. “Do we really want to live in a country where politicians can seize your phone records, compel your testimony, and ignore your rights because they disagree with your politics?”
Pelosi appointed the committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans to investigate how and why a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol shortly after a rally that featured Trump on the day Congress was meeting to certify the Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election. Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that his loss to President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
Cheney said Scavino needs to answer specifically about his political social media work for Trump, including his interactions with an online forum called “The Donald” and with QAnon, which she called “a bizarre and dangerous cult.” She said Navarro has written a book boasting about his role with former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon in planning and coordinating activities with lawmakers on a process to stop the certification of Biden’s election victory.
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the select committee, said Monday, when the committee voted to recommend the contempt citation, that the panel wants to question Scavino and Navarro on matters “that clearly fall outside” any possible claim of executive privilege.
“Last I checked, a president’s attempt to stay in power after the people voted him out of office aren’t the sort of things where executive privilege applies,” he said.
The Biden administration has rejected assertions that former Trump aides and advisers have any legal shields from being compelled to testify or turn over records, and the committee has won some court victories regarding Trump records. Scavino’s lawyer has challenged White House lawyers to provide actual legal authority for Biden to render such a judgment on executive privilege “with respect to the congressional testimony of a former president’s close aides.”
Among those who have submitted to interviews by the committee are Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, both of whom served as White House advisers.
Bannon was indicted on two counts of contempt, each of which carries a potential a penalty of up to a year in jail plus a fine. A trial is set for July. The Justice Department has yet to act on the contempt citation against Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
The hundreds of interviews by the committee have been conducted behind closed doors. In addition, the panel has requested or subpoenaed records from individuals, social media and telecommunications companies as part of the inquiry. Thompson has said the committee plans to hold public hearings with witnesses as soon as May.
