Peter Navarro isn't done battling the Justice Department

Source: Politico

09/07/2025 06:00 PM EDT


Peter Navarro will not let this go. The longtime economic adviser to President Donald Trump is a year removed from his four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee. Navarro is back in the White House and on the airwaves defending Trump’s unprecedented tariff agenda. He’s become a hero to the MAGA base and written a small library of books about his legal saga. And the Trump-led Justice Department recently announced that it no longer stands behind the arguments that led to his conviction.

But Navarro wants more. In court papers filed Sunday, the Harvard-trained economist says the Justice Department’s terse and tepid reversal isn’t good enough. He wants his former prosecutors to explain exactly why they’ve changed course — particularly on the complicated issues of executive privilege and presidential immunity that led to his conviction in the first place.

Without that explanation, Navarro says, he’ll be deprived of a chance to vindicate his original argument: that his status as a senior presidential adviser to Trump should have shielded him from his contempt-of-Congress prosecution in the first place.

“The Department of Justice should not be allowed to disavow, without explanation or acknowledgment of its reasons, the positions it has pursued in this case for more than three years,” Navarro’s attorneys say. “When the Executive Branch abandons the positions it has aggressively advanced, the interests of candor, transparency, and fairness demand that it explain why.” It’s an awkward dynamic. Navarro, who has said he doesn’t want a pardon from Trump, is actually inviting further conflict with a Justice Department prepared to let him off the hook.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/07/peter-navarro-justice-department-lawsuit-00549930