A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Peter Navarro, who served as an adviser to former President Donald Trump, to four months in prison after a jury convicted him last year of contempt of Congress charges.
Jurors found Navarro guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2020, violence at the U.S. Capitol. He refused to appear before the committee or produce requested documents.
Navarro sentenced to 4 months
Update 12:40 p.m. EST Jan. 25: U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta handed down a four-month sentence for Navarro, slightly less than the six months sought by prosecutors, according to The Washington Post and court records. Defense attorneys had asked the judge to sentence Navarro to probation.
In court, Mehta emphasized that Navarro was “not a victim” and “not the object of a political prosecution,” the Post reported.
“These are circumstances of your own making,” he said. “You have received every process you are due… as any American is entitled to...the same respect that I hope I have shown you… when you were called up to go to testify, you didn’t show a co-equal branch of Congress the same degree of respect, and it’s regrettable.”
Original report: Prosecutors are seeking a six-month sentence for each of the charges and a fine of $200,000. In court records, they said Navarro “thumbed his nose at Congressional authority and refused to comply — even before knowing what information the Committee sought.”
“He cloaked his bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt behind baseless, unfounded invocations of executive privilege and immunity that could not and would never apply to his situation,” prosecutors said, adding that Navarro “put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled this investigation.”
Navarro’s attorneys argued that he believed he was acting under Trump’s orders when he declined to comply with the House select committee. They said that Navarro’s trial “was not about January 6, 2021, and his sentence should not reflect any relationship with the events of that day.”
Instead of jail time, they said Navarro should be sentenced to no more than six months of probation and a fine of $100 per count.
Navarro’s conviction last year made him the second former top adviser to Trump to be found guilty of contempt for refusing to testify in the investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2020. In 2022, a jury found Steve Bannon guilty of failing to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee.
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