Trump Demands His Former Trade Adviser Defy a Congressional Subpoena

Former President Donald Trump is encouraging his former White House trade adviser to defy a House committee’s subpoena, Bloomberg reports. “I’m telling Peter Navarro to protect executive privilege and not let these unhinged Democrats discredit our great accomplishments,” Trump said in a statement on Saturday. Peter Navarro, the former assistant to the president and director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, is the latest in Trump’s posse to be ordered to hold out against congressional subpoenas by using the former president’s highly contested claim of executive privilege. The House committee, chaired by Democrat Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, is investigating the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020’s fall surge. Clyburn accuses Navarro of appearing to have “prioritized politics over the pandemic response” with his focus on amplifying “Trump’s Big Lie that the election results were fraudulent.”