For months, however, Navarro’s defense has fought with prosecutors over whether roughly 600 emails constitute official or personal business, including some personal journal entries. In a six-page opinion Tuesday, Kollar-Kotelly said her review of a sampling of 50 emails and their attachments found that at least 24 percent and potentially up to 56 percent of the records did in fact assist in the discharge of presidential duties.
“It is clear that Defendant continues to possess Presidential records that have not been produced to their rightful owner, the United States,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote, adding that if he were an agency responding to a public records request, “an error rate of 25%, particularly when coupled with ‘intransigen[ce]’ by the producing party, is ‘unacceptably high’ and suggests that many documents have been improperly withheld.”
The judge set a March 20 deadline for Navarro and his attorneys to review the records and gave them until March 21 to explain why he should not be held in contempt. If found in contempt, Navarro would likely have to pay a fine.
Navarro was a fervent supporter of Trump’s plan to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Like Trump, he argued that Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the results of the election in Congress. Navarro has been quite open about the plan, so much so that during an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, the host asked, “Do you realize you are describing a coup?”
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