Peter Navarro would not say on Tuesday night what he did with a confidential Fox Business directive tied to Maria Bartiromo and Donald Trump’s July 16 speech, even after Greg Kelly pressed him on whether she was out of a job. Navarro, who once served as a senior trade adviser to President Donald Trump, replied, “I’m not getting into the details.”
The exchange put a fresh spotlight on a fight that has followed Bartiromo since she and Patrick Ignozzi left and Fox Business last week. Kelly asked Navarro, “So Maria is out of a job,” and then, “What did you do with it? You forwarded it up the chain. How did you– who did you show it to?” Navarro did not answer the last part directly.
What Navarro was being asked about was a text from Ralph Giordano, who advised Bartiromo’s producers to skip coverage of Trump’s July 16 speech. Puck News reported that Fox fired Bartiromo for sharing internal guidance on how to cover the speech, and the report said the intended recipient of the guidance was Patrick Ignozzi, then the executive producer of Mornings With Maria on Fox Business. Ignozzi shared the guidance with Bartiromo, and Navarro later said she took a screenshot and forwarded it to him.
Navarro said he then passed the information “up the chain” and told senior administration officials about it, but he did not identify who received it next. That leaves the key question unresolved: whether a Fox instruction about how to cover a Trump speech stayed inside the newsroom or traveled into administration circles. Navarro’s refusal also mattered because he tied it to his own legal history, telling Kelly, “Remember, I went to prison, Greg, for not violating the executive privilege.” He was found guilty in 2023 of contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena and was sentenced to four months in jail in 2024.
The Bartiromo side of the story remains contested. A lawyer for her said reports of her firing were false, even as Navarro criticized for firing her. For now, the only clear part of the chain is the first step: Giordano’s text, passed to Ignozzi, then to Bartiromo, then to Navarro. What remains hidden is the part Navarro said he would not discuss.
