# United States v. Navarro **Status: stub — expand.** **No. 24-3006 (D.C. Cir., decided 21 July 2026).** The D.C. Circuit affirmed [[Peter Navarro]]'s conviction on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress under 2 U.S.C. § 192 for refusing to produce documents or appear for a deposition before the [[House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack]] in 2022. The holding: **[[Executive Privilege]] belongs to the Presidency**, and only the President or an official the President authorizes may invoke it. A presidential adviser has no independent privilege of his own, and a recipient's belief — even a good-faith but mistaken belief — that the President had invoked it is no defense to the subpoena. A blanket refusal to produce documents, prepare a privilege log, or appear is not an assertion of privilege at all. The court added that accommodation is "the preferred approach in interbranch disputes." The structural oddity of the case is who was left arguing it. After the change of administrations, **the government withdrew from the appeal**, and the court decided the case with Navarro alone — so the strongest modern precedent for criminal enforcement of a congressional subpoena was affirmed in a proceeding the United States had stopped defending. In dicta the court noted that a subpoena recipient retains ordinary common-law and constitutional privileges, citing [[Trump v. Mazars]]. ## See also - [[Congressional Subpoena Enforcement Flow]] · [[Peter Navarro]] · [[Steve Bannon]] · [[Executive Privilege]] · [[Congressional Oversight]]