Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has released a series of emails from 2022 showing the FBI attempted to crush a member of the first Trump administration for refusing to bow to the Jan. 6 Committee’s unlawful demands.
Grassley explains the emails in an April 29 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
“My office has obtained Biden administration emails regarding the investigation and later prosecution of Peter Navarro,” Grassley wrote. “These communications provide a behind-the-scenes snapshot of some of the actions taken by the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) to investigate Navarro for contempt of Congress and obstruction.”
Navarro was an adviser to President Donald Trump in his first term. Because of his close access to Trump, the highly partisan “House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol” gave Navarro a subpoena to appear in front of them to present testimony and documents about what happened that day.
He did not appear. Neither did White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, or former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. They refused to do so because the Jan. 6 Committee was illegally established and lacked the legal authority to issue subpoenas.
As Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway pointed out, when Nancy Pelosi formed the committee, she “refused to allow the top Republicans Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy picked for the committee — an unprecedented violation of House rules and norms.” Hemingway further observed that “the committee does not follow House rules on evidence or witness depositions” and “no cross-examination or presentation of a defense has been allowed from the targets of the trial.”
In response to these justified refusals, the Jan. 6 Committee asked the DOJ to pursue contempt charges for defying subpoena orders. They went after Navarro first. The emails Grassley released show the FBI planning Navarro’s indictment.
On May 19 at 4:50 p.m., FBI Special Agent Walter B. Giardina sent an email to seven other agents saying the DOJ would not prosecute Meadows or Scavino, but it “would like to charge Navarro in the next two weeks.” He included a to-do list to make that happen, including finding Navarro, obtaining his phone records, advising Apple to preserve evidence, “prepare[ing] a search warrant for his phone and iCloud account,” interviewing him, and serving the warrant for his phone.
Image CreditSenate Judiciary Committee
Roughly 18 hours later, on May 20 at 11:26 a.m., Giardina announced to the same email chain that the United States Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., had picked a date for indicting Navarro: June 2. Within 33 minutes, FBI Agent Blaire Toleman had forwarded the memo to Tim Thibault, assistant special agent in charge at the FBI Washington Field Office. He responded, “Wow. Great.”
Image CreditSenate Judiciary Committee
The FBI’s Washington Field Office brought in more agents and employees as the planning to take down Navarro was underway.
“A knock and talk interview will be conducted at NAVARRO’s residence on May 26 or May 27, 2022,” a May. 24 planning email sent to Thibault said. “NAVARRO is not represented by counsel. The [U.S. Attorney’s Office] currently plans to indict NAVARRO on June 2, 2022, and CR-15 will execute his arrest on either June 3 or June 7, 2022. Media attention is anticipated.”
Despite all that planning, the knock-and-talk was kind of a flop-and-stop. Thibault sent a short, anticlimactic group email on May 26 at 8:55 a.m., after FBI agents finished at Navarro’s home.
“FYSA. This morning CR-15 agents attempted to interview former WH official Peter Navarro in connection to the pending Contempt of Congress case. Navarro declined to be interviewed and accused the agents and the AG of harassment. Navarro filmed the encounter.”
But no Biden administration project is complete until the messaging is fine-tuned for maximum political impact. FBI WFO Public Affairs Officer Samantha Shero sent out an email on June 1, explaining the DOJ plan to arrest Navarro that Friday and then notify the media.
Shero wrote that the United States Attorney’s Office of Washington, D.C., “will send the unsealed indictment and notice of his initial appearance to reporters. Sending that information out once he is arrested will hopefully keep media from waiting for him to show up out front. Following his IA, USAO will issue a press release.”
Image CreditSenate Judiciary Committee
Ultimately, Navarro was arrested at Reagan International Airport and sentenced to four months in prison, in one of many unprecedented political moves made during the Biden administration. Navarro complained that during his arrest “he was handcuffed, denied food and water and refused permission to make a phone call to a lawyer.”
Grassley says the FBI should have been fighting crime, not former President Joe Biden’s political foes.
“According to the FBI’s own statistics, violent crime rose 4.5% in 2022. Meanwhile, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to prosecute two-thirds of the criminals arrested in our nation’s capital that very same year,” Grassley said in a written statement. “Instead of focusing on the rampant cases of murder and rape perpetrated against everyday Americans, personnel in the FBI’s Washington Field Office and D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office were obsessing over ways to target President Trump and his allies. Their conduct is disgraceful and un-American.”
Grassley’s letter to Bondi and Patel said three of the FBI officials who investigated Navarro also participated in the anti-Trump Arctic Frost investigation.
Earlier this week Grassley asked Patel to declassify the FBI’s analysis of the congressional criminal referral issued for Nellie Ohr, a former Fusion GPS contractor involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation against Trump.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
