WASHINGTON – Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has refused to obey an order to provide documents about coronavirus.
Trump administration’s response coronavirus. He claimed that the former president had ordered him not to comply, according to his reply to a congressional demand released on Saturday.
The subpoena was issued in November by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. Generally, it is a part of the investigation into whether ex-Trump administration officials could not manage the government’s reaction to the current pandemic by interfering in their own health agency’s activities.
Nearly 800,000 have been killed across the United States from the pandemic.
Navarro, a Republican, was also one of President Donald Trump’s pandemic response advisors and was in charge of the procurement of coronavirus vaccine and other areas.
Navarro stated in a letter addressed to the subcommittee that he was not willing to participate because Trump advised that he needed to “protect executive privilege.”
“It is a direct order that I should not comply with the subpoena,” Navarro wrote in a letter addressed to the committee that Reuters obtained.
Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat, and chair of the crisis committee, stated in a letter addressed to Navarro that he did not have a reason not to adhere and had given up any right to write about conversations he had with Trump regarding Coronavirus and the response.
The decision to accept the decision is “particularly indefensible given that you disclosed many details about your work in the White House, including details of conversations with the former President about the pandemic response, in your recent book and related press tour,” Clyburn wrote in the letter.
Navarro was unable to be reached to respond to Clyburn’s email.
However, Clyburn stated that the subcommittee would require Navarro to provide all documents and other information he has that he has and show up to depose on 15 December as the subpoena calls for.
Clyburn claimed that when the subpoena was served, she said that “rather than implement a coordinated national strategy to alleviate critical supply shortages, Mr. Navarro and other Trump Administration officials pushed the responsibility to the states and pursued a haphazard and ineffective approach to procurement — contributing to severe shortages of critically needed supplies and putting American lives at risk.”
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