Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has dropped its lawsuit against Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser and fellow criminal indictee, who is now one lucky guy. Isn’t it nice when your friends do you favors?
On Tuesday, in a one-page filing with no explanation, the DOJ entered a stipulation of voluntary dismissal in its case against Navarro. It likely goes without saying that this is not normally how the government explains a reversal like this, but Trump’s DOJ has made it pretty clear that it doesn’t work for the American people. It works for Trump.
During the Biden administration, the DOJ filed a civil suit trying to force Navarro to provide the archives of his ProtonMail, a nongovernmental email account he used during the first Trump administration. Did Biden’s DOJ do that because they are rogue deep staters bent on harassing anyone who supports Trump?
No, they did it because retention of those records is required by the Presidential Records Act. But Navarro managed to run out the clock, so now that attempt just disappears.
This isn’t a criminal case, so it’s not that the DOJ is dropping charges or anything for which Trump could pardon Navarro. No, Navarro, the poor sucker, already went to prison for his efforts to help Trump cover up his misdeeds.
After serving four months, his first stop was the Republican National Convention, where he declared dramatically, “I went to prison so you don’t have to.” Well, most of us don’t defy congressional subpoenas for our secret emails after we actively helped the former president attempt to overturn the election, so it doesn’t seem likely any of us would face this issue.
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Much like any mob organization, it no doubt helped Navarro’s standing that he went to prison so exactly one person—Trump—might not have to. For that, he was rewarded with his trade adviser gig in this administration, where he’s free to do … whatever it is he does all day. Treat the softest inquiries about Trump’s incoherent tariff policy with
unwarranted rage? Whine about how it’s Canada’s fault we attacked them with tariffs and threatened their sovereignty?
Fight with Elon Musk? Well, he’s probably no longer doing that last bit at least.
The DOJ isn’t just sending a message here that Trump’s pals get treats, though that is certainly part of what it's doing here. Dismissing a lawsuit about a failure to preserve federal records also sends the message that the Trump administration does not believe it is a problem, much less illegal, to evade recordkeeping requirements. The Trump administration does not believe in transparency and is perfectly happy to let any Trump-approved faves operate in the untraceable shadows.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Kicking the case against Navarro is borne out of the same impulse as letting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skate on Signalgate. Not to mention all the other security failures we learned in the wake of Hegseth declaring—in the middle of a Signal chat which contained a reporter accidentally invited there by a high-level administration official—that, “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
Hegseth’s behavior here was so abysmal that even Pete Hegseth thought he should go to jail. Oh, wait, no. That’s Hegseth calling for Hillary Clinton to go to jail for having a private email server. Leaking war plans to a journalist or having secret phone lines or using Signal, an app which features disappearing messages? That’s all just fine to Pete Hegseth now.
Finally, throwing out the suit against Navarro also reminds the world that Trump brazenly defied the Presidential Records Act, was indicted for illegally retaining classified records, but then, thanks to the helping hand of one of his own appointees, Judge Aileen Cannon, suffered no consequences at all.
So, while Trump didn’t get a chance to give Navarro an entirely unwarranted pardon on his criminal charges, he still got the opportunity to do Navarro a solid by dropping the civil case. And if it just so happens that people take away the message that if they are breaking the law for Trump they won’t suffer any consequences, all the better.
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