Former presidential trade adviser Peter Navarro must turn over to the government hundreds of emails that he sent or received during his time as a White House aide, a federal judge ordered.
Navarro's attorneys attempted to stop a civil suit the Justice Department filed in August to recover messages their client handled through a personal email account but refused to return to the National Archives after President Donald Trump left office.
U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Thursday issued a 22-page opinion in which she rejected the attorneys' arguments and said the privately held emails were subject to the Presidential Records Act, particularly a provision Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed in 2014.
That provision requires work-related messages created or sent on a personal messaging account be forwarded to an official account within 20 business days, Politico reported.
"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, Politico reported.
"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 provision only applied to messages he sent and not to messages he received. Kollar-Kotelly disagreed.
"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.
Navarro also is facing an upcoming trial on two criminal, misdemeanor charges of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas from the House select committee that investigated events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
In the DOJ lawsuit, Navarro argued that he should not have to turn over the disputed emails because the government might seek to use them against him in the criminal case.
Kollar-Kotelly again disagreed.
"Producing these pre-existing records in no way implicates a compelled testimonial communication that is incriminating," wrote Kollar-Kotelly, who ordered Navarro to turn over "forthwith" about 200-250 messages his lawyers have already deemed likely presidential records.
The judge gave the sides 30 days to sort out a protocol to find other official records in Navarro's personal account.
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