The House committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol filed contempt reports on Sunday for former Trump administration officials Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino.
The panel filed the reports, claiming that Mr. Scavino was given six deadline extensions for an interview about his potential role in the riot and that Mr. Navarro refused to discuss several topics he had written about in his book.
Mr. Scavino served as the former president’s deputy chief of staff and social media director, and Mr. Navarro was the White House trade adviser.
The panel, which is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, is planning to hold a meeting Monday night to vote on a criminal referral for both men for failing to cooperate on their subpoenas.
The committee is accusing Mr. Scavino of knowing about strategy and events leading up to the riot on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day Congress certified President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Mr. Scavino reportedly had been tracking the site “TheDonald.win,” which was a defunct online forum where Trump supporters had “openly advocated and planned violence in the weeks leading up to January 6th,” according to the panel.
Mr. Scavino also once held a question-and-answer session on the sub-Reddit that later launched into TheDonald.win.
Mr. Scavino’s legal team is contesting their client’s testimony, adding that concerns over the Biden administration’s intent not to protect any of his remarks, according to a report by CNN.
The committee is accusing Mr. Navarro of making zero effort in complying with its subpoenas.
The former trade adviser said he did not want to discuss a series of topics because his conversations with the president were privileged.
“There are topics that the Select Committee believes it can discuss with [him] without raising any executive privilege concerns at all, including, but not limited to, questions related to [his] public three-part report about purported fraud in the November 2020 election and the plan [he] described in [his] book,” the committee said in an email to Mr. Navarro earlier this month.
In a statement to The Washington Times, Mr. Navarro referred to the committee’s investigation as a “witch hunt.”
“My position remains this is not my Executive Privilege to waive and the Committee should negotiate this matter with President Trump. If he waives the privilege, I will be happy to comply; but I see no effort by the Committee to clarify this matter with President Trump, which is bad faith and bad law,” Mr. Navarro said.
The committee will vote Monday on criminal referrals, which would go to the full House later this week.
The panel has made three previous criminal referrals, which led to the indictment of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
The Justice Department is reviewing the referral made for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
A referral for former Justice Department staffer Jeffrey Clark did not make it to the full House floor, after he agreed to meet with the panel.
The committee is chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi Democrat.
Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, two vocal anti-Trump Republicans, are the sole GOP lawmakers on the committee.
• Mica Soellner can be reached at msoellner@washingtontimes.com.
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