The Justice Department filed suit in August to recover messages that Navarro handled through a personal account but refused to return to the National Archives after Trump left office.
A federal judge has ordered former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro to turn over to the government hundreds of emails that he sent or received during his nearly four years as a White House aide.
In an opinion on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected a slew of arguments Navarro’s attorneys floated in a bid to knock out a civil suit the Justice Department filed in August to recover messages that Navarro handled through a personal ProtonMail account but refused to return to the National Archives after President Donald Trump left office.
Kollar-Kotelly said the privately held emails were plainly subject to the Presidential Records Act, particularly a provision Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed in 2014. It requires work-related messages created or sent on a personal messaging account be forwarded to an official account within 20 business days.
“Dr. Navarro contends that he has no statutory duties under the PRA. … This position would defeat the entire purpose of the statute, i.e., to ensure that Presidential records, as defined, are collected, maintained and made available to the public,” wrote Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. “The PRA makes plain that Presidential advisors such as Dr. Navarro are part and parcel of the statutory scheme in that they are required to preserve Presidential records during their tenure so that they can be transferred to [the National Archives and Records Administration] at the end of an administration.”
Navarro argued that the personal-account provision didn’t apply to messages he received, only to those he sent, but the judge dismissed that contention.
“All the emails in Dr. Navarro’s personal email account, whether created or received, are therefore subject to being assessed as potential Presidential records if they arose out of his employment in the administration,” she wrote.
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ICYMI, a federal judge ordered former Trump adviser Peter Navarro to turn over to the government hundreds of emails that he sent or received during his nearly four years as a White House aide. https://t.co/8xcybcMgu5
— POLITICO (@politico) March 10, 2023
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