Former Trump White House official begins prison sentence

Peter Navarro serving time for contempt for refusing to cooperate with House probe into Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

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 remained defiant in remarks to reporters before he headed to a federal lockup in Miami, where he is to serve four months after being found guilty of contempt of Congress charges.

Navarro was convicted in September of defying a subpoena from the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee that investigated the 2021 Capitol attack. The subpoena sought documents and Navarro’s testimony in a deposition.

He served as a White House trade advisor under then-President Trump and later promoted the Republican’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

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 across the street from the prison.

Navarro then got in a car with his lawyer to head to the lockup. The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed later Tuesday that he was in custody.

Navarro had asked to remain free while he appealed his conviction and as courts considered his challenge. But Washington’s federal appeals court denied his request, finding his appeal wasn’t likely to reverse his conviction.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. also refused to step in, saying in a written order on Monday that he had “no basis to disagree” with the appeals court. Roberts said his finding was not to affect the eventual outcome of Navarro’s appeal.

Navarro was the second Trump aide convicted on charges of contempt of Congress. Former White House advisor Stephen K. Bannon previously received a fourmonth sentence, but a different judge has allowed him to remain free while he appeals.

The House committee spent 18 months investigating the Jan. 6 attack, in which Trump supporters tried to stop Congress’ final certification of the 2020 vote. The panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained more than a million pages of documents.

The panel concluded that Trump had criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election and had failed to act to stop his supporters from storming the Capitol.