The Justice Department sued Navarro in 2022 in an attempt to obtain emails from a personal account he used while serving as White House trade adviser.
WASHINGTON โ The Justice Department said Wednesday it will drop a civil case that sought to recover hundreds of emails from a personal account Peter Navarro used during his time as White House trade adviser during the first Trump administration.
In a terse motion filed in federal court in D.C., the DOJ said the government and Navarro had agreed to dismiss the suit with prejudice. No explanation was given for the decision. The motion was signed by Elizabeth Shapiro, the deputy director of the DOJ’s civil division, and Mark Nobile, an attorney with the law firm Schulman Bhattacharya representing Navarro.
The DOJ sued Navarro in 2022 after the National Archives determined he had not turned over copies of hundreds of emails from his personal ProtonMail account that he was required to under the Presidential Records Act (PRA). Navarro refused to turn the records over โabsent a grant of immunity,โ according to the original complaint, and has fought the subsequent litigation for years. In December, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal of a lower courtโs order requiring him to produce the emails.
Although Navarro ultimately turned over approximately 900 records, the government believed he still had additional emails covered by the PRA. Last year, a magistrate judge was ordered to review more than 1,800 emails from Navarroโs ProtonMail account during his White House tenure. In a report issued in November, Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey found more than 500 were not presidential records, but said additional hearings would be required for him to rule on roughly 350 remaining emails.
In April, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed with Harveyโs recommendations. A status report scheduled for last month to discuss a path forward for review of the remaining documents was rescheduled to Wednesday.
The dismissal joins the latest in a growing list of cases initiated under the Biden administration and summarily dropped by the Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi, including cases seeking to enforce voting rights laws in Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, the criminal prosecution of former Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry over allegedly illegal campaign contributions, and hundreds of cases stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Navarro, a vocal proponent of President Donald Trumpโs false claims about the 2020 election who served four months in prison last year for defying a congressional subpoena from the January 6th Committee, has reemerged as one of the most influential advisers in Trumpโs second administration. Navarro rejoined the White House in January as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing and has served as one of the chief architects of Trumpโs tariff policy.
Navarro was represented in both his contempt of Congress and PRA cases by attorney Stanley Woodward. Woodward, who also represented Trumpโs valet Walt Nauta in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, withdrew from representing Navarro last month after Trump nominated him to serve as associate attorney general.ย
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