Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro listens as his legal team talk to members of the media outside the federal court in Washington, Aug. 31, 2022. Navarro is scheduled to stand trial in September on contempt of Congress charges filed after he refused to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A judge set the September 5 trial date on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
A federal judge has denied former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s bid for a new trial after jurors in Washington, D.C., found him guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress when he refused to comply with subpoenas from congressional investigators probing the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Navarro claimed jurors had been improperly influenced by the press while on break and before rendering a verdict. But the judge presiding over the matter, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, disagreed on Tuesday.
“The record establishes that in addition to members of the media there were three men with signs in John Marshall Park when the jurors were on their break. Of the three men, two were filming and a third was not. None of them, nor anyone else, approached the jurors or directed any words toward them. None of them pointed their signs toward jurors. In fact, the two men filming did not seem to recognize the group as jurors in the defendant’s case,” Mehta wrote in the 15-page filing.
In a supplemental filing supporting his motion for a new trial last year, Navarro’s attorney Stanley Woodward provided a 10-minute video to the court that he argued showed how protesters were within the direct eye line of jurors who exited the courthouse on a break before rendering their guilty verdicts.
Providing another 22-minute-long clip from a right-wing streamer identified in court records only as 00Jericho, Woodward said that at the 13:14 mark, the jury is seen emerging from the courthouse and simultaneously, he said at the left corner of the video, a person’s hand — likely 00Jericho’s — can be seen touching or adjusting a sign that is either propped up on the sidewalk near his feet or leaning on his equipment.
The language on the sign reads, “J6 was a setup.”
Screen capture included in Peter Navarro’s supplemental court filing requesting a new trial cites this protester’s (left) sign appearing outside of the courthouse as jurors were on a break as proof that they were unduly influenced when rendering their verdicts.
Peter Navarro’s attorney Stanley Woodward motion for a new trial included an exhibit depicting the reflection of a person holding a protest sign in front of the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in September 2023.
In the same video at the 14:16 mark, Woodward argued that a reflection in the doors of the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse showed a protester holding a sign at their side upside down as they talk to someone else. Ten seconds later in the same video, Woodward claimed that “user 00Jericho pans his camera to the reporter pool where a third protester is clearly depicted.”
That protester is standing with a sign positioned on the ground, leaning near his knee. It reads “Free all J6 political prisoners.”
“Of note, both this protester and user 00Jericho are wearing t-shirts referencing the death of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021. At this time, the jury is still outside and mere yards from the media pool gathered outside the courthouse,” the briefing states, attaching a picture of the shirt in the filing.
Peter Navarro’s attorney Stanley Woodward argues in a motion requesting a new trial after his client’s two-count conviction for contempt of Congress that at least one protester wearing this T-shirt outside of the courthouse while jurors were nearby on a break, unduly influenced the trial outcome. Ashli Babbitt died on Jan. 6 after she attempted to climb through a shattered window in the Speaker’s Lobby during the rioting while disregarding multiple commands to stand down.
Another clip at the 15:17 mark appears to show jurors near one of the courthouse entryways, though it is unclear exactly how close.
Nonetheless, Woodward said the jury and protesters were too close for his comfort and that their very presence was responsible for prejudicing the final verdicts.
Mehta conceded Tuesday that it was possible a juror saw a sign as they returned to the courthouse but there was no evidence “that any juror saw the images of Ashli Babbitt worn by the man in the black t-shirt or Roseanne Boyland worn by the man in the white t-shirt.”
When Navarro first moved for a mistrial, ABC News reported that a court security officer testified in court after the fact. The officer said that when she escorted jurors out of the courthouse for their designated break, they were at a sufficient distance from the press as well as from protesters holding signs and a U.S. flag.
The officer, identified in court records as Rosa Torres, said jurors also did not wear badges that would readily identify them as jurors and that she saw no protester or member of the media approach them.
“Importantly, the court finds that the jurors would not have seen an additional sign contained in defendant’s motion. Likely referring to defendant, that sign said, ‘Bro, should’ve Plead the 5th Peter 4 Prison.’ Defendant’s supplement identifies the source of this image as a video ‘created to assist defense counsel’ and posted to the site Rumble. But the Rumble video does not depict the eight minute-period when the jurors were outside on a break. It instead captures the moments before and after defendant emerges from the courthouse after the verdict, long after the jurors had left John Marshall Park,” Mehta wrote Tuesday. “The sign in question appears in no other video evidence.”
The judge also described the scene outside the courthouse as “relatively placid.”
“There was no indiscriminate yelling or chanting. No one held a sign above their head. There were no activities resembling a protest,” Mehta wrote.
Not only did Navarro fail to show prejudice, “he has not shown that any juror was actually exposed to any improper external influence” either, the judge said.
Navarro was found guilty of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a request from the select Jan. 6 committee seeking his records and testimony.
He argued former President Donald Trump had asserted executive privilege over both. Members of the select committee wanted to know specifically about Navarro’s plan to delay the Jan. 6 electoral certification as it was laid out in his memoir, “In Trump Time.” The plot, according to Navarro, would have allowed a pressure campaign on then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the certification indefinitely as objections were considered on Jan. 6, 2021. While this was happening, Navarro said it would allow GOP-backed legislatures in half a dozen battleground states to stop their certifications based on widespread voter fraud.
In the end, prosecutors convinced a jury that even if executive privilege had been asserted, Navarro was still obligated to appear before the U.S. Congress to answer their questions.
Navarro faces sentencing later this month. Both of his convictions carry a minimum of 30 days in jail or a maximum of up to a year. Each count also carries a fine of up to $100,000.
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