{"id":26066,"date":"2023-09-09T06:26:18","date_gmt":"2023-09-09T10:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=26066"},"modified":"2023-09-09T06:26:18","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T10:26:18","slug":"peter-navarro-ex-trump-adviser-convicted-of-contempt-of-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/09\/09\/peter-navarro-ex-trump-adviser-convicted-of-contempt-of-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Navarro: Ex-Trump adviser convicted of contempt of Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Trump aide Peter Navarro has been convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to co-operate with an inquiry into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Prosecutors said Navarro acted “above the law” by ignoring a subpoena from a congressional investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He faces up to a year in prison for each of the two contempt counts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Another key Trump ally, former strategist Steve Bannon, was convicted last year of contempt of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Outside the court in Washington DC on Thursday, Navarro said it was a “sad day for America”, vowing to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“This is the first time in the history of our republic,” he said, “that a senior White House adviser, an alter ego of the president, has ever been charged with this alleged crime.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He argued that the Department of Justice has had a policy for more than 50 years that senior White House advisers could not be compelled to testify before Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Yet they brought the case,” Navarro said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He was found guilty by the 12-member jury after four hours of deliberations, following a trial that lasted two days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As well as an appeal, Navarro’s lawyers are motioning for a mistrial, alleging that jurors went outside court during their deliberations and encountered protesters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Navarro, who served as senior trade adviser to former President Donald Trump, was served with a subpoena by a US House of Representatives select committee in February 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But he did not hand over any of the requested emails or documents or appear to testify before the Democratic-led panel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The committee had hoped to question Navarro about efforts to delay certification of the 2020 election, according to a former staff director for the panel who testified in court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In his 2021 book, In Trump Time, Navarro said he was the architect of a strategy to challenge the election results, claiming widespread voter fraud.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The plan was for congressional Republicans to delay certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Navarro called this strategy the Green Bay Sweep, a reference to a tactic in American football.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The House committee said Navarro’s claims of massive ballot fraud had been exposed as baseless by state and local officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Navarro was indicted in June last year and arrested by FBI agents at a Washington airport as he was boarding a flight to Nashville, Tennessee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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During their closing arguments, prosecutors said Navarro chose his allegiance to Mr Trump over complying with the subpoena.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“That is contempt. That is a crime,” prosecutor Elizabeth Aloi told the court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Navarro’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward, presented little evidence during the trial and instead sought to discredit the prosecutor’s case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When contacted by the committee, Navarro said Mr Trump had instructed him to cite executive privilege.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This is a legal principle that allows certain White House communications to be kept under wraps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But last week, Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama nominee, ruled there was no evidence that Mr Trump or executive privilege could have permitted Navarro to ignore the committee’s summons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In addition to a maximum sentence of a year in prison for each count, Navarro also faces fines of up to $100,000 (\u00a380,000).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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His sentencing is scheduled for January.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bryan Lanza, a former Trump campaign adviser, told the BBC the prosecution seemed politically motivated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“It is not uncommon for Congress to hold former or serving members of presidential administrations in contempt,” he said.<\/p>\n

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Lawmakers found ex-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, but he was not criminally prosecuted<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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“It is uncommon for the actual justice department to go forward with these prosecutions.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He cited the example of the former US Attorney General Eric Holder, under Democratic President Barack Obama, who was found in contempt of a Republican-controlled Congress in 2012 for refusing to hand over subpoenaed documents, but was not criminally prosecuted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’re going down a dangerous route by escalating these things,” said Mr Lanza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“That’s not good for our system of government,” he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon was convicted of two counts of contempt for defying the House committee’s legal summons in July 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail, but has remained free while his defence team appeals the conviction.<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0 bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Trump aide Peter Navarro has been convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to co-operate with an inquiry into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. Prosecutors said Navarro acted “above the law” […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[8656,285,9709,4466,4974,3628],"class_list":{"0":"post-26066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-contempt-of-congress","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-peter-navarro","12":"tag-us-congress","13":"tag-us-department-of-justice","14":"tag-washington-dc","15":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26066"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26070,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26066\/revisions\/26070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}