After being violently arrested and mistreated by the FBI, former Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro was indicted on June 3 on two counts: 1) refusing to produce documents demanded by the January 6 committee; and 2) refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoena to testify.
Navarro pleaded not guilty, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed a deal: plead guilty to one of the two charges, and they’ll send him to jail for just 30 days rather than up to a year for such infractions. Navarro’s attorney told (Obama-appointed) U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta on Friday that Navarro declined to take the plea deal.
Part of the deal would require that Navarro turn over to the committee the various papers, documents, and other materials they had originally demanded.
Navarro, it will be remembered, produced the three-volume report on the 2020 presidential election called The Navarro Report. It was based on evidence compiled in more than 50 related lawsuits and thousands of affidavits and testimonies, all of which indicated, according to Navarro, “a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the deck against the Trump-Pence ticket.”
Navarro’s conclusion has since been echoed by Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary 2000 Mules, which has now been viewed by more than 20 million Americans.
Navarro’s report, as well as D’Souza’s documentary, claim that massive voter fraud perpetrated in battleground states determined the final outcome of the election.
One of Navarro’s attorneys, John Irving, said his client’s denial of both the committee’s demands and the plea bargain stems from a “constitutional case involving separation of powers.… It involves not only the President of the United States asserting his executive privilege but [also] over 50 years of DOJ opinions that make it clear that top presidential aides are able to assert absolute immunity and not testify before Congress.”
Another Navarro attorney, John Rowley, told reporters: “This is the first time in our nation’s 250-year history that a senior adviser to a president has been criminally charged for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena.”
That the Department of Justice, through its Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has now become the enforcement arm of the January 6 committee, reaching far outside its legitimate and constitutional prerogatives, is evident in how they treated Navarro.
As Navarro himself explained:
On June 3, 2020, five armed FBI agents swooped down on me at Reagan National Airport as I was about to board a flight to Nashville and an interview with Mike Huckabee.
I was denied the opportunity to call an attorney, quickly handcuffed, jammed into the back seat of a government car, sent first to the FBI for a mug shot and fingerprinting, and then to a Washington, DC jail.
At the DC jail, I was first spread-eagled and stripped searched [sic] and then put in a set of leg irons. A prison guard then led me to solitary confinement and placed in same cell in which John Hinckley once sat after shooting President Reagan.
At issue is not so much the separation of powers, but the legitimacy of the committee. As Navarro noted:
The issue is whether the so-called January 6 Committee — a Kangaroo Democratic Committee empaneled by Nancy Pelosi without support of the Minority House Republicans — can illegally weaponize the investigatory powers of the U.S. Congress.
Last February I received a subpoena from this unduly authorized, illegal, and highly partisan committee. I made it clear from the outset that I was honor- and duty-bound not to comply with that subpoena because President Trump had invoked “Executive Privilege.” By law, President Trump’s executive privilege is not mine to waive.
In my repeated communications, I directed the Jan. 6. Committee to go directly to President Trump and his attorneys and negotiate a possible waiver of the privilege. If President Trump had negotiated such a waiver, I further indicated that I would have complied with the subpoena.
Instead of following the law in this matter — or even bothering to go to court to have a federal judge weigh in on the matter — the Jan. 6 Committee voted to hold me in contempt of Congress.
They shared the contempt charge with the Department of Justice. And the DOJ, which has never acted in such a manner in the entire history of our Republic, targeted me for a brutal arrest and show trial prosecution.
The actions of the FBI, an agency of the Department of Justice, against a private citizen were historic:
In the history of our nation, no senior White House official has ever been arrested on a contempt of Congress charge, put in leg irons, and pushed into a prison cell.
No one!
From the outset, I have made it clear this fight is not just about my freedom.
This fight is also about fighting against the illegal weaponization of Congress’ investigatory powers.
It is about stopping the political weaponization of the FBI.
His trial is set for November 17.
Related articles:
Establishment’s Navarro Message: “We Can Get You Anytime. You Can’t Touch Even a Single One of Ours”
