Ex-Trump White House official reports to prison
MIAMI – Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro reported to prison Tuesday to begin serving his sentence for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Navarro was defiant in remarks to reporters before he headed to a federal lockup in Miami, where he will serve a four-month sentence after being found guilty of contempt of Congress charges.
Navarro was found guilty in September of defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee that investigated the 2021 capitol attack.
He served as a White House trade adviser under then-President Donald Trump and later promoted the Republican’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Navarro has maintained that he couldn’t cooperate with the committee because Trump had invoked executive privilege. Courts have rejected that argument, finding Navarro couldn’t prove Trump had actually invoked it.
“When I walk in that prison today, the justice system – such as it is – will have done a crippling blow to the constitutional separation of powers and executive privilege,” Navarro told reporters Tuesday.
Navarro then got in a car with his lawyer to head to the lockup, and the federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed later that Navarro was in custody.
Navarro had asked to stay free while he appealed his conviction to give the courts time to consider his challenge. But Washington’s federal appeals court denied his bid to stave off his sentence, finding his appeal wasn’t likely to reverse his conviction.
And Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday also refused to step in, saying in a written order that he has “no basis to disagree” with the appeals court.