Peter Navarro, former Trump adviser, sentenced to 4 months in prison for ignoring congressional subpoena

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Peter Navarro was sentenced Thursday to four months in prison for contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena related to a congressional investigation into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Navarro was indicted in September on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the attack.

The judge overseeing Navarro’s case said Thursday that the former Trump adviser’s conviction was of his “own making,” while lashing out at Navarro for claiming his actions were politically motivated.

“I guess what really bothers me is that here we are over a year and a half later and you still want to suggest to me that this is political persecution. You want me to believe that this is political persecution,” the judge said. is,” the judge said. District Amit Mehta raised his voice during the sentencing hearing. “When the evidence is completely to the contrary.”

“You are not a victim. You are not an object of political persecution,” the judge said. “These are circumstances of your own making.”

Mehta also fined Navarro $9,500.

Navarro quickly appealed the case to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday. His lawyers have long said they plan to file an appeal to raise issues related to his claim that he failed to comply with the subpoena because Trump invoked executive privilege.

Each count carries a mandatory minimum sentence of one month in prison, but prosecutors asked District Judge Amit Mehta to sentence Navarro to six months on each count, to be served concurrently, and impose a $200,000 fine.

Last week they told the judge that the one-month sentence on each of the two counts was “inadequate to explain, punish and deter the defendant’s crimes,” arguing that Navarro’s decision not to comply with the subpoena was similar to the conduct of some. People who participated in the riots.

“Defendant, like the Capitol riots, puts politics before country and obstructs congressional investigations,” the lawyers wrote. “The defendant chose loyalty to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law.”

Navarro’s conviction and sentence represent another major victory for the now-disbanded House Jan. 6 commission in efforts by the Justice Department to criminally pursue people who refuse to cooperate with its investigation.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt in 2022 and subsequently sentenced to four months in prison. Bannon’s case is currently under appeal.

Navarro’s lawyers are seeking a sentence of no more than six months’ probation on each count, and last week asked Mehta to suspend any sentence they would impose while he appeals the conviction.

A quick trial

Navarro’s trial, held last September, moved quickly and the jury took less than a day to hear all the evidence in the case.

Prosecutors put only three witnesses on the stand, all former members of the January 6 Committee of the House of Representatives. The Justice Department used his testimony to argue that the commission had good cause to subpoena Navarro and repeatedly informed him of its demands.

Prosecutor Elizabeth Eloi told the jury in her closing argument that Navarro was “aware of the plan to delay congressional activities on January 6” and that she was “more than happy” to convey this knowledge in public statements, but not to the House committee. House of Representatives.

Navarro’s attorneys did not present any witnesses of their own, but instead focused on the portion of the contempt charge showing that Navarro willfully and willfully failed to comply with the subpoena, i.e., that his failure was not consequential. Inadvertent mistake or accident.

Navarro has insisted that he failed to comply with the subpoena at the direction of Trump, who claimed executive privilege over the matter. But before trial, Mehta concluded that Navarro had not met his burden of showing that Trump had formally asserted testimonial privilege or immunity that would have prevented his former adviser from appearing to answer the commission’s questions.

The former adviser said he plans to raise that issue and others in the appeal.

“An appeal of this case will definitively answer what is necessary for a former president to invoke executive privilege regarding his senior advisers, and for any future adviser to know that the president he served did not properly exercise executive privilege.” privilege,” his lawyers wrote in court papers.

A federal appeals court in Washington is currently considering Bannon’s request to overturn his contempt of Congress impeachment.

During oral arguments last year, some members of the three-judge panel hearing the appeal seemed skeptical of arguments by Bannon’s attorney that the court judge who oversaw Bannon’s criminal case was wrong when he denied executive privilege as part of his defense. was , and that the former counsel was acting only on the advice of his then counsel when he failed to comply with the subpoena.

— CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.