SCOTUS refuses to hear former Trump aide’s immunity appeal

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to consider an appeal by former White House official Peter Navarro, who is fighting a government order to disclose emails stored on an unofficial email account. In a 2022 lawsuit, the Department of Justice accused Navarro of storing emails from the encrypted personal account during his time in the Trump administration.

What’s Navarro’s argument against the court order? The former trade advisor to President-elect Donald Trump argued that the Presidential Records Act barred federal agents from searching email records. Navarro’s court brief cited concerns about how the emails would be used against him in a pending criminal case.

What’s Navarro’s criminal case? A federal judge in January sentenced the former Trump advisor to four months in prison after a jury found him guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress. Those charges were in connection with his refusal to comply with a House of Representatives investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Navarro sought immunity from the high court to prevent him from having to turn over the emails. Multiple lower courts rejected Navarro’s arguments for immunity and a federal judge threatened to hold Navarro in contempt earlier this year if he continued refusing the order, according to reporting by The Hill.