March 19 (UPI) — Ex-Trump administration official Peter Navarro on Tuesday began a four-month prison sentence in Miami, becoming the first former White House official to serve jail time for contempt of Congress.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Navarro’s last-ditch effort to avoid jail for his refusal to provide documents to the House Select Committee, which investigated the violent and deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Speaking for about 30 minutes at a press conference near a Papa John’s outside a local South Florida strip mall, Navarro talked about the grievances he had in the trials, during which he was convicted of contempt in the congressional investigation into former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.
As one of Trump’s — now the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee — “highest adviser’s,” Navarro spoke about his expansive view on executive privilege rights
“This is not about me,” he said addressing reporters and while encouraging them to look into what he called a “unprecedented assault on the constitutional separation of powers and the doctrine of executive privilege as a critical tool dating back to George Washington.”
His defense attorney Stanley Brand on Monday called Navarro’s situation “historic, and will be to future White House aides who get subpoenaed by Congress.”
Navarro’s prison consultant told CNN that it is hoped that Navarro’s roughly 90-day prison sentence will be in an air-conditioned facility for what he described as for “elderly” inmates. Navarro is 74.
But the Florida jail that will house him and nearly 80 other inmates is one in which Navarro is expected to have “no privacy in the dorm.”
“I will walk proudly in there to do my time,” Navarro said before beginning his jail sentence. “I will gather strength from this: Donald John Trump is the nominee.”
