Peter Navarro, an ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump, was sentenced Thursday to four months in prison for ignoring a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
The rare judgment makes him the second Trump official to be sentenced for defying the congressional committee’s authority after Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022.
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Navarro, who claimed credit for devising a plan to overturn the 2020 election, was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in September for refusing to testify and provide documents after receiving a House subpoena in February 2022. Lawmakers had requested that he answer questions about the “The Green Bay Sweep” plan that he and Bannon claimed to have worked on to get Trump loyalists in Congress to contest ballots from six swing states that Biden won, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
The Justice Department had requested a sentence of six months for both Trump advisers, accusing Navarro of pursuing a “bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt” that prioritized loyalty to Trump over the rule of law. “The defendant, like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation,” federal prosecutors wrote in a 20-page sentencing memo. “The defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law.”
While in the White House, Navarro was one of Trump’s top economic advisers, serving throughout the administration as director of trade and industrial policy. A Harvard-trained economist, he pushed Trump to wage a trade war with China, advocated for tariffs, and advised the president during the pandemic on medical equipment shortages and methods to keep the American economy running during lockdowns. But after the 2020 presidential election, Navarro’s focus shifted to efforts on how to keep Trump in power after he lost.
Prosecutors said that Navarro undermined the congressional committee’s authority by defying its subpoenas and thus “exacerbated the assault” on the U.S. Capitol. The House panel was put together in the aftermath of the attack with the goal of telling the full story of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021—and the days and weeks leading up to it—and to identify steps that should be taken to prevent such an event from happening again. Five individuals died, and more than 140 police officers were assaulted that day as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
Navarro’s lawyers argued that their client “reasonably believed” he did not have to cooperate with Congress because he thought his testimony was barred by executive privilege, a legal doctrine that shields some presidential records and communications from disclosure. “Dr. Navarro’s actions do not stem from a disrespect for the law, nor do they stem from any belief that he is above the law,” his lawyers wrote. “Rather, Dr. Navarro acted because he reasonably believed he was duty-bound to assert executive privilege on former President Trump’s behalf.”
Navarro spoke briefly in court on Thursday, saying that he “did not know what to do” when he was subpoenaed by the congressional committee and that he had an “honest belief that the privilege had been invoked.”
Bannon’s lawyers raised a similar defense, maintaining that he could not testify because of executive privilege concerns raised by Trump and that his attorney had advised him not to comply with the congressional subpoena because of the potential consequences. Bannon’s case is currently on hold after he appealed his four-month sentence because the judge did not let him assert executive privilege as part of his defense.
The judge in Navarro’s case also rejected that claim. Prosecutors alleged that Navarro knew Trump had never actually asserted executive privilege, and U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta—an Obama appointee—ruled that he could not use the legal shield in his defense at trial because there was no compelling evidence that Trump had told him to ignore the committee’s subpoenas. President Joe Biden also denied executive privilege claims made by Navarro and other Trump officials in connection to the congressional probe into the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Navarro will also likely appeal his sentence. If either Bannon or Navarro go to prison, they will be the first person put behind bars for defying a congressional subpoena in more than 50 years.
Over the course of its 17-month investigation, the Jan. 6 committee issued over 100 subpoenas, interviewed more than 1,200 witnesses, and collected hundreds of thousands of documents. The Justice Department declined to prosecute two of Trump’s closest advisers—former chief of staff Mark Meadows and social media director Dan Scavino—for refusing to cooperate with the committee’s investigation since both had received letters from Trump’s lawyer directing them not to respond to subpoenas from the committee due to executive privilege. “Had the President issued a similar letter to Defendant, the record here would look very different,” Mehta previously said of Navarro’s case.
“I’m a Harvard-educated gentleman,” Navarro said in court on Thursday, “but the learning curve when they come at you with the biggest law firm in the world is very, very steep.”
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