this evening to consider the house of representative find peter k. navarro and daniel scavino junior in contempt of congress for refusal to come pry with subpoenas that duly issued by the select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the united states capitol. without objection, the chair authorizes to declare the committee in recess at any time. i ll recognize myself for an opening statement. this evening, the select committee is considering two more citations for criminal contempt of congress for daniel scavino junior and peter navarro. before i get started, i want to comment quickly on the ruling today and john eastman s lawsuit to stop the select committee from obtaining certain records.
his team moved willfully through multiple means to attempt to halt the peaceful transfer of power, to halt our constitutional process for counting votes, and to shatter the constitutional bedrock of our great nation. as a federal judge concluded today, that the inequality of president trump s plan for january 6th was quote, obvious. today, as the chairman noted, we addressed to specific witnesses who have refused to appear for testimony. mr. scavino worked directly with president trump, to spread president trump s false message that the election was stolen, and to recruit americans to come to washington with the false promise that january six would be an opportunity to quote, take back their country. this effort to deceive was widely effective and widely destructive.
both government employees. they worked in the white house. they drew salaries paid by the taxpayers. they had conversations with the ex president so now they are saying they won t answer any of our questions because of executive privilege. there are a couple big problems with their argument. first, generally speaking, executive privilege doesn t belong to just any white house official to the president, here president biden has been clear executive privilege does not prevent cooperation with the select committee by either mr. scavino or mr. navarro and while the ex president reportedly raised privilege concerns when it comes to mr. scavino and mr. navarro s case, nobody is even trying to invoke privilege except mr. navarro himself. that s just not the way it works. peter navarro isn t president.
it s important to note that even if a president has formerly said invoked executive privilege regarding testimony of a witness which is not the case here, that witness has an obligation to sit down under oath and assert the privilege question by question. but these witnesses didn t even bother to show up. second, if the ex president has a claim to privilege, this happened in a privileged capacity. if mr. scavino or mr. navarro are claiming they all that all the information they have is protected by executive privilege, they did it in their officials roles paid by taxpayers. as i said before, we want to talk to mr. scavino and mr.
more than a year after the attack on our capitol, the public is still searching for accountability. i m proud to say that this committee is helping to lead that search for accountability. it s why we re here tonight. so let s turn to mr. scavino and mr. navarro. these aren t household names and my colleagues will share some details about who they are and why they are so important to our investigation. in short, these two men played a key role in the ex presiden s in the 2020 election. the selection committee is learning more about their roles in what they need new and mr. scavino s case, he strung us along for months before making it clear that he believes he is above the law. mr. navarro despite sharing