DOJ Sues Trump Official Over ‘Illegally Retained’ Documents

Donald Trump's former trade adviser, Peter Navarro, was sued this week by the Department of Justice for illegally retaining documents covered under the Presidential Records Act. Navarro allegedly used a separate email address to send documents while at the White House, which means that he could still be in position of the digital versions of items that he is no longer allowed to have. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Peter Navarro Donald Trump's former trade advisor, who by the way, got us into a trade war that is actually still happening in case anybody hasn't checked on that recently, I do always like to remind people the trade war's still happening, but either way, Peter Navarro this week was actually sued by the United States department of justice for allegedly illegally retaining documents that were protected under the presidential records act and should have been both saved and turned over during the multiple times that the department of justice has asked Peter Navarro to turn over the damned. So here's what happened. And you're gonna love the irony of this story. By the way, Peter Navarro had apparently been using a proton mail account during his time in the white house. And he was using that personal private email account to send official records and official documents from his work in the white house.

And even though it was still on his private email, because it pertained to things happening in the white house information to and from the president of the United States, it was covered, excuse me, under the presidential records act. And therefore he was legally required to not only retain all of it, but when asked to turn over physical copies of it to the department of records, the national archives, and he didn't do it. So they asked again and he didn't do it. And so this week, right before the DOJ sued him, they asked him one more time, give us the documents, man. Like what gets me about this? This isn't part of the January 6th investigation. Okay. This is just, Hey, we, we are doing the record. Keeping you have things. You, you just have to turn 'em over. So, so we can archive them. That's it. They're not saying turn 'em over so we can look through for criminal activity.

They're just saying, Hey, I think you walked away with some things. Can we have those back? Because we gotta put 'em away. Like Peter Navarro would not be in trouble, which I get more to that in a second. The irony of it, Peter Navarro is not in trouble. He's in trouble now because he refuses to give them to them. So now he's getting sued on top of, of course, all the mess he has with the January 6th committee. But here's the thing, the irony, right? That's the fun part. We had a white house official using private email. Wow. And this wasn't the only one from the Trump administration using private messaging. Right. Could you imagine what would happen if a Democrat like was using private email for official communications? I have to imagine if that were to happen. I mean, Republicans probably would've launched investigations that went on for years. Probably would've pulled the individual in question in front of Congress and forced him to testify in front of a camera for

11 hours. Right? Don't you think that would've happened? If a Democrat had been accused of this? Yes you do. Because yes it did because that was the story of Hillary Clinton. We have all of these former Trump officials who, while they were in the white house were doing the same thing that Trump's audiences were screaming, lock her up for doing with Hillary and here they are doing the same thing. And nobody gives a crap. The, again, Navarro's not being investigated for using the private email. All they're saying is, can we just have it so we can archive it and be done? Nobody's even saying, oh, by the way, that's illegal. What you did. So we need to throw you in jail.