Peter Navarro Reports for Jail in Historic Contempt of Congress Case
The former top trade advisor to President Trump maintains that he believed he had executive privilege and that he is a victim of selective prosecution.
A former top trade advisor to President Trump, Peter Navarro, reported for jail on Tuesday in Florida after being sentenced to four months in federal prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the January 6 House committee to appear before Congress.
“I am the first senior White House advisor in the history of our republic that has ever been charged with this alleged crime,” Mr. Navarro said at a press conference before heading to prison. “When I walk into that prison today, the Justice Department such as it is will have done a crippling blow for the constitutional separation of powers and executive privilege,” he added.
Mr. Navarro has maintained that he believed he had executive privilege and that he is a victim of selective prosecution. He filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court asking to stay out of jail while he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction, arguing that he was not a flight risk. Chief Justice John Roberts rejected that request on Monday.
“The little story here is Navarro’s going to prison today,” he said while suggesting to journalists that they focus on two bigger stories. “One is about what is really an unprecedented assault on the constitutional separation of powers and the doctrine of executive privilege as a critical tool dating back to George Washington,” he said.
The second big issue, he said, “is the emergence of lawfare and the partisan weaponization of our justice system.”
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden last week refused a request from House Republicans to publicly testify, calling the hearing a “carnival side show.”
In the past, Mr. Navarro has rebuffed conflation of his “principled stand” with Hunter Biden’s refusals to testify.
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen refusing to comply with a lawful congressional subpoena seeking information on the illegal abuse of his father’s office and ‘Biden brand’ to unlawfully peddle influence in Ukraine and Communist China,” he wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. “I was a senior White House adviser who received an unlawful congressional subpoena.”
As Mr. Navarro begins his time in prison, he will be in dormitory, bunk-bed style housing with “no privacy,” CNN reports, adding that he will have access to TV, phone, and email. “It can be scary and intimidating. But he’s going to be perfectly safe,” a prison consultant for Mr. Navarro, Sam Mangel, told CNN.
