As referenced by Stephen Colbert below, one of the worst Trump dead- enders got a taste of justice yesterday:
Trump White House official Peter Navarro, who was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced on Thursday to four months behind bars.
He was the second Trump aide convicted of contempt of Congress charges. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon previously received a four-month sentence but is free pending appeal.
Navarro was found guilty of defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House Jan. 6 committee. He served as a White House trade adviser under then-President Donald Trump and later promoted the Republican’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta told Navarro that it took “chutzpah” for him to assert that he accepted responsibility for his actions while also suggesting that his prosecution was politically motivated.
“You are not a victim. You are not the object of a political prosecution,” the judge said. “These are circumstances of your own making." [snip]
Mehta said that asserting executive privilege is not “magic dust to avoid a duty."
“It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” the judge added...
Navarro is a nasty piece of work, with an academic sheen belying an aggrieved, eccentric world view. He was among the White House staffers most actively involved in the coup plot and its lead-up (a decent summary of his efforts here, not surprisingly under "Attempts to overturn the 2020 election"). In a more perfect world, he and his co- conspirators would be charged with sedition, like some of the sad sacks who attacked the Capitol on January 6, believing these nuts were telling them the truth.
(Photo: woe is he / Drew Angerer, Getty Images)
