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On Thursday, Peter Navarro, a vocal anti-election campaigner and senior Trump White House spokesperson who accused the administration of complicity in devising sworn statements to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcome, was found guilty of contempt of Congress for not cooperating with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The former trade adviser, 74, was found guilty of two contempt charges in a federal trial in Washington that included just one day of testimony from three prosecution witnesses and no witness for Navarro.
Navarro is the second Trump official to be found guilty of contempt of Congress, joining right-wing provocateur Stephen K. Bannon who was also convicted last summer. Both men are vocal supporters of the widely debunked claim that former president Donald Trump was denied reelection due to voter fraud in key states.
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Navarro, like Bannon, refused to comply with a subpoena from Congressional Democrats, who falsely and maliciously attempted to use legislative ploys to overturn Biden’s victory by holding rehearsing in november.
The two ex-White House aides also refused to cooperate with the bipartisan panel, asserting that Trump had ordered them not to provide testimony or documents on issues the committee was investigating after leaving office.
Despite the fact that both defendants were not authorized to use executive privilege as a defense during the trial, the guilty verdicts arrived relatively quickly due to the absence of logical justification. Similarly, Navarro was charged with two counts of contempt, one for concealing documents and the other for not giving oath. The jury in navarro’s case, in U.S. District Court, began deliberating at 11 p.m. on Thursday and later returned at 4 pm. A panel composed eight men and four women who left the courthouse tour
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In her closing arguments on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi stated that President Navarro had made a decision to not comply with Congressional subpoena and that government only works when people follow the rules or are held accountable when they do not act.
Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison after a jury deliberated for 212 hours in July 2022 at the same courthouse. He will be released later on until his appeal is finalized, and Judge Amit P. Mehta has scheduled Navarro’s sentencing for Jan. 12.
The pair, including Navarro, an economist and top Trump official for all four years of the administration, and Bannon, a Trump political adviser who served as chief White House strategist for seven months in 2017, are the first defendants to be sentenced to more than 50 years in prison for failing to comply with Congressional subpoena under nefarious federal law.
The Washington Post reported that Peter Navarro, a Trump White House adviser accused of criminal contempt of Congress, arrived for his trial in U.S. District Court in Washington on September 5th.
Following the disbanded select committee’s subpoena in February 2022, Trump, who is now running for president, has been charged with 91 felonies in four indictments, including four federal charges related to trying to overturn the election.
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Similar to Bannon, Navarro’s initial expectation was to plead that Trump had infringed on executive privilege by talking to him after leaving office, which is important for protecting the privacy of past conversations between presidents and their inner circle. However, Mehta refused to allow the argument as a case study for navarro, ruling that there was little evidence of such discussions taking place.
Navarro informed reporters that the day Judge Mehta declared his inability to use executive privilege as a defense was already over. He added that they had made this determination and would now appeal the verdict to the appeals court. However, he still expressed willingness to serve time in jail.
John P. Rowley III, one of Navarro’s attorneys, stated that the prosecution raises significant questions about the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government as well as the utilization of executive privilege.
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Rowley emphasized that the case, which is being heard now, won’t be resolved until the Supreme Court takes up next.
Outside the courthouse, Navarro taunted his political and ideological adversaries, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former House speaker, and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
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He stated that Nancy Pelosi is attempting to imprison him in the House of Representatives due to his political affiliation as a member of the Trump administration.
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The prosecutors were spared from a legal dispute over Trump’s purported assertion of executive privilege, and therefore had to establish that Navarro received the subpoena, provided it was pertinent information for the inquiry,and willfully refused to comply with its requests for evidence and documents.
To achieve their objective, prosecutors summoned only three witnesses: David Buckley, the committee’s staff director, and two of the panel’ senior investigative counsel, Daniel George and Marc Harris. Stanley E. Woodward Jr., who represented Navarro, cross-examined just George for 15 minutes while no other witnesses were called.
Harris, who was supposed to be the primary questioner in Navarro’s scheduled deposition, informed the jury that he had planned to interrogate the former Trump adviser on various matters, including the legislative plan to prevent electoral ballot counting and navarro’s false claims of widespread voting irregularities. Despite this, a three-volume report was prepared by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Donald Trump, which allegedly involved collecting his fraud information through submitting it to Trump himself before Jan. 6.
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Harris testified that committee investigators wanted to investigate whether Navarro’s “stolen election” falsehoods, the effort to stop the electoral-ballot count, and the Capitol attack were connected. He claimed that navarro was subpoenaed by the panel’s staff for his direct contribution to uncertainty about Biden’S victory in order to provoke violence.
Navarro’s defense was muted, leaving the discussion focused on long-shot arguments.
Woodward requested that the bench render verdicts of not guilty for Mehta before the jury’s deliberations, urging the judge to consider the possibility that Navarro did not have the documents requested by the committee. He also claimed that Prosecutors had failed to demonstrate that his client had the records filed in the subpoena, which meant he should be cleared of contempt on that count.
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Despite this, Navarro has never claimed to have had the documents in court or before the committee.
Woodward argued that the contempt charge should be dismissed because prosecutors had not been able to prove that Navarro intentionally evaded the scheduled deposition, as per federal case law. He also stated that any such action is not willful when it involves a deliberate error, an accident, or other innocent event.
Was he?
“I’m uncertain.”
In his closing statement to the jury, Woodward emphasized the issue of willfulness, explaining that prosecutors had not established any reason for Navarro’s failure to respond to their subpoena other than by accident or deliberate questioning.
Prior to his indictment last year, Navarro and Bannon had written statements to the Daily Beast and a 2021 memoir, which detailed their legislative plan that involved manually counting electoral votes on January 6, 2020. This meant that Trump supporters in both houses of Congress would challenge ballots from six swing states that Biden had won, and each challenge would generate four hours of debate, making foreshadowing events nationally broadcast live for 24 hours.
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According to Navarro, his role was to provide Trump-friendly lawmakers with “evidence” on voter fraud to justify the difficulties, while Bannon’s duty was simply to rally support for the plan among Republicans in Congress. The two individuals named their approach “the Green Bay Sweep,” which is an accurate recreation of a famous end-run play from the 1960s NFL team led by coach Vince Lombardi.
Vice President Mike Pence was expected to return the electoral votes to the states for re-evaluation as part of the joint session. As per the plan, the House would ultimately choose the next president with 50 state delegations casting a single vote to determine the outcome. Despite Democrats having more members in the chamber, Republicans had control of most delegation heads.
Pence’s refusal to join the Capitol riot caused the absurd play to fail.
Emails requesting comment on Navarro’s version of the scheme were not responded to by Bannon or his defense attorneys during their contempt trial.
Navarro claimed in an interview with Rolling Stone that Trump’s intention was to achieve peace and tranquility on Jan. 6 to implement the Green Bay Packers Sweep, but the House select committee disagreed and identified former president Donald Trump as the primary reason for the riot.
In the contempt case, prosecutor John Crabb Jr. contended that Navarro behaved as though he was above the law, but no one was.