Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro sentenced to four months in prison

Peter Navarro, a top former Trump administration official, was sentenced to four months in federal prison and $9,500 in fines after he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol attack.

The sentence imposed by Amit Mehta in federal district court in Washington was lighter than recommended by prosecutors but tracked the four month-jail term handed to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who was similarly convicted for ignoring the panel’s subpoena.

“You are not a victim, you are not the object of a political prosecution,” the US district judge said from the bench. “These are circumstances of your own making.”

Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September of two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to produce documents and testimony in the congressional investigation into the Capitol attack, claiming that executive privilege protections meant he did not have to cooperate.

The committee took a special interest in Navarro because of his proximity to Trump and his involvement in a series of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including to have members of Congress throw out the results in a plot he named “The Green Bay Sweep”.

But Navarro’s subpoena defiance prompted a criminal referral to the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which brought the charges and ultimately asked for six months in jail because he brazenly ignored the subpoena even after being told executive privilege would not apply.

“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,”