Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison on Thursday for violating a subpoena from a House select committee investigating the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
Navarro, 74, argued that he could not comply with a subpoena for his testimony and related documents because of executive privilege, but a D.C. jury convicted him in September of two counts of contempt of Congress.
“I have not heard a single word of remorse from Dr. Navarro since this case began,” US District Judge Amit Mehta said before imposing penalties, including a $9,500 fine.
The former president’s trade adviser appealed for clemency, but Mehta still exceeded the mandatory minimum of two months in prison.
Navarro insisted to reporters when he arrived that he was the subject of “an important constitutional case that will resolve important issues about the Constitution’s separation of powers and the integrity and competence of presidential decision-making.”
After the sentencing hearing, Navarro, who was not immediately remanded to federal custody, said that he believed the Supreme Court should hear his upcoming appeal.
The same court will host former President Donald Trump’s trial over his challenge to the 2020 election results ahead of the riots.
The case is expected to begin later this year as the 77-year-old former president seeks a second non-consecutive term against President Biden in the November election.
Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro speaks to the media as he arrives in federal court in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. AP
Navarro, known for advocating tariffs and a tougher economic approach to China, was director of the Trump White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy and left the post two weeks after riots disrupted the certification of Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.
Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon – who, unlike Navarro, was not a White House aide on January 6, 2021 – was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022 and sentenced to four months in prison. Bannon is free pending appeal.
Navarro said he unsuccessfully tried to speak late, but only after the House voted against him.
Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro speaks to the media as he arrives in federal court in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. AP
“I contacted the Department of Justice. I offered them a way forward,” Navarro told reporters after he was arrested by the FBI in June 2022. “They reacted effectively the same way you saw in Stalin’s Russia or the Chinese Communist Party.”
The case was brought by the office of US Attorney Matthew Graves, a Biden appointee whose team declined to prosecute two other former Trump aides elected by the then-Democrat-controlled House for contempt.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino were not indicted, which Judge Mehta said undermined Navarro’s claim that the prosecution was politically motivated.
Vice Chair Liz Cheney (right) and Chairman Bennie Thompson (left) of the House select committee investigating the January 6 US Capitol riot testify before the House Rules Committee. AP
“Joe Biden is not responsible for your prosecution,” Mehta declared at one point in the proceedings, according to Politico.
Graves has taken heat from Republicans in the meantime for failing to bring charges in many conventional criminal cases. His office uniquely prosecuted both federal and local crimes in DC and did not pursue charges 67% of the time following an arrest in fiscal 2022 and 56% of the time in fiscal 2023.
Prosecutors have blamed issues with certification at the DC crime lab, but critics have noted that violent crime has soared in the nation’s capital, which recorded an 82% increase in car thefts in 2023, a 67% increase in robberies and a 35% increase in murders. .
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
