The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack will consider holding in criminal contempt of Congress next week two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers in Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro, the panel announced on Thursday.
The move to initiate contempt proceedings against the two Trump aides amounts to a biting rebuke of their refusal to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel deploys its most punitive measures to reaffirm the consequences of noncompliance.
House investigators said in a notice that it would consider a contempt report against Scavino and Navarro in a business meeting scheduled for next Monday on Capitol Hill, after they defied subpoenas compelling them to provide documents and testimony.
The select committee is expected to vote unanimously to send the contempt report for a vote before the House of Representatives, according to a source close to the panel, so that the Trump aides can be referred to the justice department for prosecution.
The select committee took a special interest in Scavino, since, as Trump’s former deputy chief of staff for communications, he was intimately involved in a months-long effort by the Trump White House to overturn the results of the 2020 election.