White House trade advisor to former President Donald Trump, Peter Navarro, just learned he’ll be spending four months in prison after refusing to provide testimony before a congressional panel that was looking into the riot that took place outside the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Okay, now let’s do Hunter Biden. Hey, if they are going to try and hang someone out to dry who was part of the Trump administration, let’s make sure to apply the law concerning contempt of Congress equally across the board.
I mean, that’s only fair, wouldn’t you agree?
via Breitbart News:
Navarro, 74, a Harvard-educated economist, was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress by a federal jury in Washington in September after a two-day trial. US District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced him to four months in prison — two months less than prosecutors had requested — and ordered him to pay a fine of $9,500.
“You are not a victim,” The Washington Post quoted Mehta as saying at Navarro’s sentencing hearing. “You are not the object of a political prosecution. These are circumstances of your own making.”
Navarro had refused to appear for a deposition before the House of Representatives committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress by Trump supporters and declined to supply documents to the panel.
This makes the second ally of the former president to be convicted of contempt of Congress for not obeying a subpoena issued from the House committee. The other was former White House chief of strategy Steve Bannon, who now hosts a very popular conservative podcast.
Bannon was also given a four-month prison sentence, but as of this writing he is free pending an appeal. Navarro is expected to follow Bannon’s lead and file for an appeal of his own.
Trump is scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the November 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden. The Republican ex-president, the clear favorite to becoming his party’s 2024 White House nominee, faces similar charges in a separate case in the southern state of Georgia.
In a book, Navarro described creating a plan after the election called the “Green Bay sweep,” a reference to American football, to reverse Biden’s victory by blocking confirmation in the House.
He stated in the book that the former president was “on board with the strategy.”
Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff, also refused to appear before the committee, though he never faced charges of contempt of Congress for his actions. He made the claim that he possessed immunity since he served as a former top adviser to the president which prevented him from being compelled to testify before the committee. That same defense did not work for either Bannon or Navarro.
After the incident at the Capitol building took place, Trump was impeached for a second time, facing charges of starting an insurrection, though he was officially acquitted by the Senate.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see how this all shakes out, but if things are delayed long enough and Trump wins the presidency, he may just be able to pardon these two and put the whole thing to bed.
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