Justice Department seeks six-month prison sentence for Peter Navarro

The Department of Justice is seeking a six-month prison sentence for former White House adviser Peter Navarro over his criminal contempt of Congress conviction.

Navarro, who worked as an adviser to then-President Donald Trump, was convicted of failing to respond to a congressional subpoena twice last year. Federal prosecutors said that Navarro now deserves a “severe” punishment, and they are requesting a $200,000 fine and prison time.

The former adviser to Trump had attempted to invoke executive privilege when defying the subpoena, but a judge later rejected it.

“The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo on Thursday. “He cloaked his bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt behind baseless, unfounded invocations of executive privilege and immunity that could not and would never apply to his situation.”

Navarro’s attorneys have requested the judge sentence Navarro to no more than six months in prison and to reduce the fine to $200.

“Despite the government’s effort to label Dr. Navarro as an insurrectionist, the reality is that his conviction arises solely from a conviction for his refusal to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoena and has nothing to do with the events that occurred at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Navarro’s lawyers wrote in their filing.

The former White House employee is not the first person to face jail time over their failure to testify on the events of Jan. 6 to Congress. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison in 2022, but his sentence has been delayed pending an appeal. 

Federal prosecutors in charge of Navarro’s case drew comparisons between Navarro and Bannon on Thursday, claiming Navarro was “exploit[ing] his notoriety.”

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“Like Stephen Bannon before him, throughout the pendency of this case, the Defendant has exploited his notoriety — through courthouse press conferences, his books, and through podcasts — to display to the public the reason for his failure to comply with the Committee’s subpoena: a disregard for government processes and the law, and in particular, the work of the Committee,” prosecutors wrote.

Navarro is scheduled to be sentenced next on Jan. 25.

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