<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied Peter Navarro's request to rehear his contempt of Congress case, leaving the Supreme Court as his next option for challenging the conviction.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The appeals court's order, issued on Friday, indicated that no judge requested a vote on Navarro's petition for rehearing en banc, which would involve review by the full court. Navarro's attorney, Abhishek Kambli, stated that the case “was always headed to the Supreme Court.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Kambli added, “The D.C. Circuit’s denial simply clears the runway.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Navarro's petition focused on the interpretation of the word “willfully” in the federal contempt statute, which criminalizes a witness's intentional failure to comply with a congressional subpoena. His legal team argued that the government should have been required to prove that Navarro knew his actions were unlawful or acted with a bad motive, rather than just that he did not appear before the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Kambli contended that a 1961 D.C. Circuit decision, Licavoli v. United States, set an insufficient standard by allowing an intentional failure to appear to be sufficient for a conviction. He argued that subsequent Supreme Court cases have generally required a bad or unlawful purpose for “willful” criminal conduct.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit unanimously upheld Navarro's two felony convictions last month. The panel determined that Navarro invoked executive privilege without direction from President Donald Trump and did not demonstrate that Trump instructed him to withhold testimony or records. Navarro was convicted in 2023 and served a four-month federal prison sentence in 2024.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Kambli asserted that Navarro should have been permitted to inform jurors that he acted under a good-faith belief that executive privilege justified his noncompliance.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Kambli remarked, “The issue is bigger than Dr. Navarro. Whether a White House adviser — Republican or Democrat — can be prosecuted and imprisoned for acting on a good-faith belief that a President invoked executive privilege, while being forbidden from presenting that belief to the jury.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This development follows a separate contempt case involving Steve Bannon. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols recently rejected the Justice Department's request to dismiss Bannon's case after the Supreme Court vacated his conviction in April. That ruling pertained to the Trump administration's effort to terminate Bannon's case and does not affect Navarro's challenge regarding what he claims is an unfair legal standard applied during his separate trial.</p>