WASHINGTON — A Trump White House official convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol will be sentenced Thursday.
Prosecutors are asking a judge to sentence Peter Navarro to six months in prison and impose a $200,000 fine. He was the second Trump aide to face contempt charges from Congress.
Navarro was found guilty of ignoring a subpoena for documents and testimony from the House of Representatives committee on January 6. Navarro served as a White House trade adviser under then-President Donald Trump and later promoted the Republican’s baseless claims of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election that he lost.
Navarro has vowed to appeal the ruling, saying he could not cooperate with the commission because Trump had invoked executive privilege. However, a judge banned him from using this argument during the trial, finding that he had not shown that Trump had actually relied on it.
Justice Department prosecutors say Navarro tried to hide behind claims of privilege before he knew exactly what the commission wanted and showed a “contempt” for the commission that should warrant a longer sentence.
Defense attorneys, on the other hand, said Trump did claim executive privilege, putting Navarro in an “untenable position,” and that the former adviser should be sentenced to probation and fined $100.
Navarro was the second Trump aide to face contempt charges from Congress. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon was convicted of two charges and sentenced to four months behind bars, although he was free while he appealed his conviction.
Navarro’s conviction comes after a judge rejected his bid for a new trial. His lawyers had argued that jurors may have been improperly influenced by political protesters outside the courthouse as they took a break from deliberations. Shortly after their break, the jury found him guilty of two felony counts of contempt of Congress.
But U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Navarro did not show the eight-minute pause had any effect on the September sentence. There was no protest going on and no one approached the jury – they only interacted with each other and the court official assigned to accompany them, he discovered.