CNN
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Peter Navarro, a former White House aide to former President Donald Trump, spoke to reporters at a Miami gas station Tuesday morning before reporting to federal prison. He will go down in history as the first senior White House official to be imprisoned. He was found guilty of contempt of Congress.
Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison for failing to respond to a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
His conviction marks a rare case in which a Trump aide has been held accountable by the criminal justice system for resisting an investigation. Mr. Navarro's incarceration comes as Mr. Trump himself has yet to face criminal penalties for various crimes he has allegedly committed.
“This is historic, especially for future White House aides who receive subpoenas from Congress,” Stanley Brand, a former House general counsel who is now representing Navarro as one of his attorneys, said Monday. It will be a momentous event.”
Punishing Mr. Navarro for evading a House investigation will increase the leverage that lawmakers have in governments of both parties to secure cooperation with investigations.
For decades, the two branches of government have engaged in a game of chicken over the protections surrounding the presidency and how Congress can enforce subpoenas. There was an incentive on both sides to negotiate an agreement rather than test the critical issue of presidential privileges and immunities in court.
In this case, after the Justice Department held Mr. Navarro in criminal contempt and referred him to the Justice Department, Congress took the unusual step of indicting a former White House adviser on charges of defeating a Congressional subpoena. Lectured. Prosecutors said Navarro's failure to fully comply with lawmakers' demands was a sharp departure from the typical interactions other former officials have had with lawmakers over their participation in congressional investigations. .
Mr. Navarro made a last-ditch effort to seek Supreme Court intervention to postpone his surrender to prison.
“The prosecution of a senior adviser to the president for asserting executive privilege violates the constitutional independence required by the principle of separation of powers,” his lawyers wrote to the high court. “Until Dr. Navarro's indictment, the Department of Justice had never concluded that a senior adviser to the president could be charged with contempt of Congress for asserting executive privilege.”
His lawyers even subpoenaed Anne Gorsuch, the mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was held in contempt by the U.S. House of Representatives as head of the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1980s but was never prosecuted.
Chief Justice John Roberts denied Navarro's request on Monday.
Mr. Navarro was unable to show that executive privilege applied to the information he had related to the 2020 election.
U.S. Attorney General Elizabeth Preloger told the justices in a counter-argument that “a successful privilege claim does not excuse the applicant's failure to fully comply with the subpoena.”
Decades ago, the U.S. House of Representatives would personally arrest witnesses who blocked subpoenas, but in recent years Congress has subpoenaed them only through lawsuits (which have become more difficult during the Trump era) and Justice Department referrals. could request execution of the letter. But the number of times the Justice Department has agreed to prosecute witnesses for contempt of Congress is extremely small. In 2010, a political appointee in the George W. Bush administration was charged with contempt of Congress and later took a plea deal to serve one day in jail.
High-stakes confrontations between presidents and their aides over their participation in congressional investigations predate the Trump administration, but Trump and his allies have taken resistance to new levels during and after the Trump presidency. .
Navarro was subpoenaed for documents and testimony related to the effort to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, sacking of the Capitol. Mr. Navarro denied the request, claiming that President Trump had claimed privilege over the request and that the House committee had denied the request. He will negotiate directly with Trump to resolve the dispute. He was indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in June 2022 and was found guilty on both charges in September last year.
Former President Trump adviser Steve Bannon was also indicted and convicted on similar charges stemming from his failure to comply with a House committee subpoena on January 6th. He was no longer in the White House during the period the House committee was investigating. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who handled his case, granted a four-month stay on Bannon's prison sentence while his appeal continues.
Navarro will serve his sentence at a federal prison in Miami, where he is expected to spend 90 days, given a federal law that allows early release for certain inmates.
Sam Mangel, a prison consultant hired by Navarro to prepare him for prison, said Navarro wants to be assigned to an air-conditioned dormitory reserved for “older” male inmates.
Mangel told CNN that the dormitory has 80 men living in bunk beds and that “there is no privacy in the dormitory.”
“It can be scary and intimidating. But he will be completely safe,” Mangel said. Navarro will be able to access the prison's TVs for news, as well as email and phone calls.
This prison is one of the oldest in the country and is located next to the city zoo.
“Not only can you hear the lions, you can hear the lions roaring every morning,” Mangel said.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
