The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will recommend former Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino be held in contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with subpoenas.
The committee released the report recommending the contempt charges on Sunday night, ahead of their planned meeting Monday, where they will vote on sending it to the full House.
The committee, which is comprised of six Democrats and two Republicans who both support investigating former President Donald Trump’s role in the attack, will likely approve holding Navarro and Scavino in contempt.
If cleared by the committee, the recommendation then moves to the full, Democratic-controlled House, which would then vote on whether to turn the matter over to the Justice Department.
In a statement last week, Navarro called the contempt vote “an unprecedented partisan assault on executive privilege.” Navarro, along with other Trump allies who have been subpoenaed, have said they cannot overrule Trump invoking executive privilege. President Biden, meanwhile, has rejected the claims of executive privilege.
AP/Andrew Harnik, AP/Alex Brandon
The committee has issued a subpoena to Navarro, who served as a trade adviser to former President Donald Trump, alleging he developed plans to change the outcome of the election. Scavino, a former deputy chief of staff, was also subpoenaed in September to provide documents to the committee and sit for depositions, along with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Pentagon chief of staff Kashyap Patel.
The January 6 select committee has already formally recommended the U.S. House formally refer Bannon and Meadows for contempt of Congress prosecution. The House, by a majority vote that included nine Republicans, voted in favor of the referral.
Weeks later, the Justice Department charged Bannon, who turned himself in to authorities and pleaded not guilty. He is scheduled for trial in late July in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. His defense attorney told CBS News the defense expects to file a motion to dismiss the charge 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, with a majority vote that included only two Republicans, approved the referral of Meadows for possible charges in mid-December. Three months later, no case has yet been filed.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the two Republicans on the committee, told “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning that he is “not confident that Meadows has handed over everything at all.”
“He was cooperating with us for a little bit, and then, in an attempt to make Donald Trump happy, he stops cooperating,” Kinzinger said. “We gave him plenty of space to come back and resume that. He has not.”
Last week, CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post obtained texts between Meadows and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, that the House January 6 committee also possesses. In the texts, Ginni Thomas pushed Meadows to overturn the 2020 election.
Rebecca Kaplan, Ellis Kim and Zak Hudak contributed to this report.
