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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Peter Navarro will never go away.
Donald Trump’s erstwhile econ crank left the White House more than three years ago. And yet that weirdo, kicked up by Jared Kushner as he trawled Amazon looking for someone who endorsed his father-in-law’s childish trade theories, is still blowing up our PACER alerts on the regular.
Less than two weeks ago, Judge Amit Mehta tossed Navarro’s motion for a mistrial and rejected his bid to stay out of the clink pending appeal. And now he’s getting his ass kicked — again! — by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in the replevin case. Because if MAGAworld is good for anything, it’s for reminding us of legal concepts we forgot completely just ten minutes after taking the multi-state portion of the bar exam.
Here, the Justice Department sued Navarro to force him to turn over government emails hidden on his encrypted Protonmail account. It’s an issue with implications for the former president, who has maintained that the only legal remedy for his refusal to return government documents was for the National Archives to keep asking him nicely to give them back. But even after Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted summary judgment a year ago and ordered Navarro to hand ’em over, Navarro is still putting up a fight.
First Navarro appealed to the DC Circuit, which simply rolled its eyes and passed. But even after multiple warnings from the court that the defendant needed to get right with God and Merrick Garland, the government still insists that he’s not in compliance. In August, the court ordered Navarro to hand over “a random sample of fifty emails across each account searched that were not identified as responsive in his last review” for in camera inspection. And today, she published the results of that review.
Now don’t faint, but …
Overall, the Court calculates that at least 24% of the materials provided in the random sampling are Presidential records as that term is defined under the PRA. But, since sixteen of these records (i.e., 32%) cannot be classified as either a Presidential record or a personal record at this time, the error rate in this case ranges from 24% to 56%. In the FOIA context, 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. Meeropol v. Meese, 790 F.2d 942, 960 (D.C. Cir. 1986)[.] [String cite omitted.]
And since Navarro’s behavior throughout this entire debacle is more or less the textbook definition of “intransigent,” he and his lawyer have now gotten themselves a new babysitter.
“Given Plaintiff’s difficulty in obtaining its Presidential records, additional supervision of Defendant’s compliance with this Court’s judgment is warranted,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote this morning, granting the government’s motion to enforce the year-old judgment. “To accomplish this goal, the Court shall refer this matter to a magistrate judge to ensure that Defendant provides all Presidential records to Plaintiff, including but not limited to the twelve records already identified by this Court.”
She’s given him until March 21 to get fully compliant, and in case that’s not clear, she’s holding in abeyance the show cause order as to why he shouldn’t be held in contempt.
So now the only question is which will come first: the custodial sentence in the criminal case, or Navarro’s full compliance with the replevin order.
Stupid games, stupid prizes.
US v. Navarro [Civil Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast
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