Appeals court rejects Navarro bid to block order to turn over emails

Peter Navarro lost his bid to block an order that requires him to hand over hundreds of emails sent during his tenure as a White House adviser during the Trump administration to the National Archives.

A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that “there is no public interest in Navarro’s retention of the records, and Congress has recognized that the public has an interest in the Nation’s possession and retention of Presidential records,” according to a Wednesday filing shared by NBC News.

The panel denied Navarro’s request for a stay after he appealed a judge’s ruling last month requiring him to turn over 200-250 emails from a personal encrypted account that he’d used during his time in the Trump White House.

Under the Presidential Records Act, White House records must to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of an administration for preservation, but Navarro had refused a Justice Department (DOJ) request to give up the materials, prompting the department to sue.

The latest filing also says Navarro failed to back up his claim that complying with the order to turn over the records would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. “Navarro has not shown that returning the United States’ property would inflict any irreparable harm,” the judges wrote.

Navarro’s legal woes over the documents come as former President Trump faces a DOJ special counsel investigation into his handling of classified materials after an FBI search of his Palm Beach, Fla., home last year turned up materials kept past his time in the Oval Office.