The selection committee unanimously approved the contempt of the congressional report. The petitions are now being put to a vote before the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, which is expected to pass resolutions on referrals to the justice department. Congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the selection committee, said during the vote that the committee was seeking criminal prosecution for Navarro and Scavino to punish their failure to cooperate on claims of executive privileges he did not recognize. “The executive privilege does not belong to any White House official. It belongs to the president. “Here, President Biden was clear that executive privileges do not preclude cooperation with the Select Committee from either Mr Scavino or Mr Navarro,” Thompson said. “Even if a president has formally invoked an executive privilege on the testimony of a witness – which is not the case here – this witness has the obligation to sit under oath and claim the privilege question by question. “But these witnesses did not even bother to appear.” The vote to advance the allegations against the two Trump White House aides came as the jury was expected to convene to discuss whether to ask Genie Thomas’s wife, Ginny Thomas, to assist with the investigation. The panel sought cooperation from Navarro, a former senior Trump adviser, as he helped devise an illegal plot with agents in Trump’s “war room” in Washington to stop then-Vice President Mike Pence from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. . Navarro worked with Trump campaign attorneys to pressure lawmakers in Biden’s battlefield states to validate the results and instead send Trump voter lists for congressional certification, the commission said in a contemptuous report. Trump’s former aide also encouraged then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to invite Roger Stone to a Jan. 6 meeting, and he coordinated with Willard’s War Room chief, Steve Boon, on attack on the Capitol, the panel added. But Navarro told the selection committee – without providing any evidence – that the former president had upheld the executive order on the contents of the summons issued last month and refused to provide documents or testimony. For months, the commission also sought help in its investigation from Scavino, the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, as he attended several meetings with Trump to discuss electoral fraud. But after the commission gave Scavino six extensions that pushed for summonses from October 2021 to February 2022, the former Trump aide also told House investigators he would not comply with the order because Trump invoked executive privilege. The jury rejected the executive’s arguments, saying neither Navarro nor Scavino had reason to ignore the calls because either Trump did not formally invoke protection or because Biden eventually resigned. MP Jamie Ruskin, visibly outraged as he read the remarks during the vote, criticized the allegations of executive privileges. “Please leave us the silly discussions about executive privileges, which have now been rejected by every court that has heard it,” Ruskin said. “This is America, and there is no executive privilege here for presidents, much less trained councilors, to plan coups and organize uprisings against the people’s government in the popular constitution and then cover up the details of their crimes. “These two men,” Ruskin said of Navarro and Scavino, “despise Congress, and we must say, both for their brazen indifference to their duties and to our laws and institutions.” The commission also said that even if it accepted the allegations of executive privileges, the two former Trump aides had no reason to ignore the calls altogether, as they also requested documents and testimony on non-privileged issues. The commission added that the Justice Department’s legal counsel had also ruled that they had no reason to defy the summons request, noting that there had never been any alleged immunity from presenting misconduct to Congress. And in the vote on the petition, the committee’s vice-chairwoman, Liz Cheney, urged the Justice Department to reject the arguments of the two Trump aides that they were defying their calls if the House made the expected criminal referrals. “The Ministry of Justice has been entrusted with the defense of our constitution. “The leadership of the department should not apply any immunity doctrine that could prevent Congress from revealing and fully addressing the causes of the January 6 attack,” Cheney said.
