The Department of Justice has recommended that Peter Navarro, an adviser to former President Trump, should be sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to cooperate with a House investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riots.
Navarro, a staunch Trump ally, was convicted in September of contempt of Congress in Washington's federal courthouse of two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress, both punishable by up to a year behind bars.
The House committee, which was investigating the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to stop congressional certification of the 2020 election, had issued a subpoena in February 2022. The subpoena sought a deposition and documents from Navarro, but Navarro refused, according to the indictment. A defense attorney argued Navarro did not purposely ignore the House Jan. 6 Committee.
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In a 20-page sentencing memo submitted Thursday night, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi said they were seeking the sentence because of Navarro’s "bad-faith strategy" of "sustained, deliberate contempt of Congress."
"The defendant, like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation," Aloi wrote in their sentencing memo. "The defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law."
Prosecutors wrote that Navarro deserves "severe punishment" and also want him to be fined $200,000.
Navarro is set to be sentenced on Jan. 25 in Federal District Court in Washington.
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Navarro had told prosecutors that his testimony was barred by executive privilege, and he declined to participate in their probe.
Prosecutors said Navarro should have handed over what material he could and flagged any questions or documents believed to be protected under executive privilege. They said much of the material the committee sought was already publicly available.
"The factual record in this case is replete with proof that with respect to the Committee’s subpoena, the Defendant consistently shielded his defiance behind claims of executive privilege he knew to be meritless, and did so because of his contempt for the Committee and its mission," the memo states.
Prosecutors said that Navarro knew Trump had not actually asserted executive privilege and that the only evidence he could provide was a November 2021 press release.
"At no time did the Defendant provide the Committee with any evidence supporting his assertion that the former President had invoked executive privilege over the information the Committee’s subpoena sought from the Defendant, or otherwise challenge the Committee’s authority or composition," Aloi wrote. "The Court was left with only the Defendant’s fan fiction version of what the Defendant wished or hoped the former President might have wanted but left unsaid."
Navarro’s lawyers, citing executive immunity, said that the subpoena flew in the face of the notion that a president could direct his subordinates to refuse to testify before Congress, according to the New York Times. They wrote in their memo that "history is replete" with people who "have refused to comply with congressional subpoenas, and Dr. Navarro’s sentence should not be disproportionate from those similarly situated individuals."
Navarro was the second Trump aide to face contempt of Congress charges after former White House adviser Steve Bannon, who was convicted of two counts and was sentenced to four months behind bars, though he has been free pending appeal.
The House has also voted to hold former Trump aide Dan Scavino and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress, but the DOJ has not prosecuted them.
Fox News' Bradford Betz and Jake Gibson as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.
