What other Jan. 6 subpoenas led to contempt charges and what were their outcomes?
Executive summary
Several high-profile targets of the Jan. 6 select committee faced contempt referrals, but only two were criminally charged by the Department of Justice—Steve Bannon, who was convicted, and Peter Navarro, who was indicted; other referrals such as Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino were voted for contempt by the House but did not produce DOJ prosecutions, highlighting limits of congressional enforcement and prosecutorial discretion [1] [2] [3].
1. Steve Bannon — contempt referral, federal indictment, conviction and sentence
Steve Bannon was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee, the House voted to hold him in contempt, the panel referred him to DOJ, and prosecutors returned an indictment charging him with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress; Bannon was tried, convicted on both counts in July 2022 and later sentenced — an outcome the committee hailed as vindication of congressional subpoenas even as his defenders assailed the process and raised claims about bias and executive‑privilege arguments [4] [2] [5] [6].
2. Peter Navarro — contempt referral and federal indictment, criminal case initiated but not resolved in provided reporting
Peter Navarro, a former White House trade adviser, was held in contempt by the House after he refused the committee’s subpoena; the Justice Department indicted him on two counts of criminal contempt in June 2022 — each count carrying a potential one‑year maximum — marking DOJ’s second high‑profile contempt prosecution arising from the Jan. 6 inquiry [7] [3] [8]. Reporting in this set documents the indictment and frames it as a test of DOJ precedent for charging former White House advisers, but these sources do not report a conviction or final disposition for Navarro, so the publicly reported outcome here is the indictment itself [3].
3. Mark Meadows — House contempt vote but DOJ declined to prosecute (as reported)
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was the subject of a unanimous Jan. 6 committee recommendation that the House hold him in contempt, and the full House voted to do so in December 2021 after protracted litigation over his documents and testimony; yet, according to reporting by Roll Call and other outlets, DOJ ultimately declined to bring criminal charges against Meadows for defying the committee’s subpoena, illustrating how a contempt referral can stop at the prosecutorial gate [9] [1] [10].
4. Dan Scavino — House contempt vote but no DOJ charge indicated in reporting
Dan Scavino, another former Trump aide, was voted into contempt by the House along with Navarro in April 2022 after months of refusing to comply with the select committee’s subpoena; multiple outlets reported the House action but also noted that the Department of Justice indicated it would not charge Scavino, reinforcing a pattern in which the panel’s criminal‑contempt referrals did not automatically translate into prosecutions for every target [7] [11].
5. The broader pattern — many subpoenas, few criminal prosecutions, political framing on all sides
The Jan. 6 committee issued more than 100 subpoenas and referred five witnesses for contempt, yet DOJ charged only two—Bannon and Navarro—reflecting institutional limits: Congress can vote contempt and refer matters to DOJ, but criminal enforcement requires prosecutorial will and resources, and DOJ decisions were subject to internal precedent around former White House advisers and political concerns raised by Republicans who labeled many subpoenas “invalid” [1] [8] [11]. Reporting from Roll Call and The Hill underscores that the committee’s legal victories were mixed and that the path from subpoena to courtroom was neither automatic nor uniformly successful, a fact seized on by both committee proponents as proof of accountability and by opponents as evidence of overreach [1] [8].