Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro to begin four-month jail sentence for contempt of Congress

Nearly four years after he tried to help former president Donald Trump unlawfully remain in office after losing the 2020 election, ex-White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Navarro surrendered on Tuesday to authorities at a prison facility near Miami, Florida to begin a four-month jail sentence, less than a day after the Supreme Court denied his last-ditch bid to stay his sentence pending appeal of his conviction on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress.

In a bizarre press conference held in a parking lot across from the prison facility, Navarro hurled invective at the judges who’d heard his case and rejected his prior appeals, accusing them of acting as Democratic Party agents because they were appointed by or were supporters of former president Barack Obama. He also attacked jurors in Washington, DC, calling them biased against him because of the low number of people there who’d voted for former president Donald Trump.

“So I get in front of that jury. The judge had already stripped me of the defences and I’m facing that jury and by the way, the judge who stripped me… he he got appointed to the bench by Barack Obama,” he said. “Democrat, Democrat Democrat from start to finish. This is the partisan weaponization of our judicial system”.

Navarro told reporters he would “walk proudly” into the facility and “do [his] time” but claimed he was the only person going there who had been convicted of a misdemeanour.

“I will gather strength from this,” he said.

After he took several questions from reporters, he walked towards a car with his attorneys, asking photographers gathered there to give him space. He then got into the vehicle, which drove towards the prison