Peter Navarro Is A Very Poor Lawyer

Peter Navarro has written a meandering 88 page draft pro se complaint to fight off this grand jury subpoena he got for refusing a congressional subpoena. https://t.co/4VzMeCWwsK https://t.co/GJw4UYWD4r pic.twitter.com/WsxWbUmBJS

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) May 31, 2022

 For one thing, he doesn’t understand that we have only one President at a time, and executive privilege attaches to the office, not the person. Just as Biden can reverse any EO Trump made, so can he undo any executive privilege claim, especially where there are questions of criminal action to be investigated.

Has Navarro not been watching the news lately?

and (7) declare that President Joe Biden does not have the legal authority to waive the executive privilege or testimonial immunity invoked by his predecessor in this civil case.

This is fairly well settled law. 

Then there’s this howler:

enjoin the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from enforcing Grand Jury Subpoena #GJ2022052590979 USAO #2022R00631 dated May 26, 2022 which is derivative of the fruit of the poison tree ultra vires, illegal, and unenforceable Committee subpoena dated February 9, 2022;

The grand jury subpoena is not a Committee subpoena. EOD. From that mistake springs Navarro’s error in suing the Committee, the Speaker, and several representatives (I really don’t know why he joined them and I can’t be bothered to read the Complaint that carefully.). Aside from U.S.Attorney, none of the persons or entities sued has any official connection to the grand jury which issued the subpoena.

But the best part is the attempt to sound like a lawyer with a “fruit of the poisonous tree “ claim. That’s a defense to a violation of the 4th Amendment. It’s not a defense to a grand jury subpoena.

And again, the subpoena in question is not from a congressional committee.

So this whole thing is just a joke.

While I am not a lawyer, I’m not without legal expertise. One of my areas of expertise in economics for which I have a Ph.D. in is regulatory economics; and this sub-field requires a keen understanding of regulatory law. I am therefore not without experience in reading case law and parsing legal arguments, and I have also published numerous articles in law journals.

He is, in fact, so far out of his depth it’s not funny. His entire argument is that the grand jury subpoena is just the Committee subpoena being pursued by alternate means. Separate investigations are entitled to use separate authority against the same witness. Navarro thinks this is some kind of illegal collusion.

It’s the most long-winded example of Bad Legal Takes I’ve ever seen.