The Department of Justice has dropped a lawsuit filed under the Biden administration against Trump adviser Peter Navarro.
In a court document, government lawyers wrote that they “stipulate to the dismissal of this action with prejudice, each side to bear its own fees and costs.”
The 2022 lawsuit accused Navarro of using a “non-official” email account to send and receive materials. At the end of his time in Trump’s first administration, Navarro did not hand over the email contents to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as described by the Presidential Records Act, The Hill reports.
Navarro was later convicted of contempt of Congress in 2023 after refusing to comply with a subpoena in relation to the investigation surrounding January 6.
In May, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released emails exposing Biden-era FBI agents “planning and celebrating the indictment of Trump advisor Peter Navarro in 2022.” The emails “detail preparations by the Biden FBI and D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office to arrest and press criminal charges against Navarro for contempt of Congress,” a press release explained at the time. “Navarro was ultimately the first White House official in history to be jailed on a contempt of Congress conviction, serving four months in prison in 2024. Upon receiving news of Navarro’s impending indictment, former anti-Trump FBI official Timothy Thibault replied, ‘Wow. Great.'”
Grassley condemned the FBI’s actions, saying that while the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office “refused to prosecute two-thirds of the criminals arrested in our nation’s capital” in 2022, the office and FBI agents were “obsessing over ways to target President Trump and his allies. Their conduct is disgraceful and un-American.”
