Former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has been ordered to report to a federal prison on March 19 to serve out his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
Navarro’s legal team renewed its request to stay the sentence in a filing late Sunday as the 74-year-old mounts a last-ditch appeal of his conviction.
“Navarro has now been ordered to report to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, FCI Miami, on or before 2:00PM EDT on March 19, 2024,” his lawyer Stanley Woodward revealed in a filing with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
Should the court fail to grant Navarro’s stay request, he will become the first high-ranking official in former President Donald Trump’s White House to get tossed behind bars on charges related to the 45th president’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat by former Vice President Joe Biden.
Navarro was charged after defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to appear for a deposition and fork over documents.
As a result, Congress held him in contempt, which the Justice Department later prosecuted. Navarro fought back, arguing that executive privilege precluded him from cooperating.
Navarro was convicted Sept. 7 on two counts of contempt of Congress and was sentenced on Jan. 25.
The ex-White House official has fought his conviction at every turn, even arguing unsuccessfully at one point that an “approximately eight-minute outdoor break in John Marshall Park adjacent to the courthouse” may have tainted the jury due to nearby protesters.
Navarro demanded a new trial, but presiding US District Judge Amit P. Mehta rejected that argument, concluding there was no evidence Navarro was subject to executive privilege.
Mehta also declined to stay the sentence while Navarro’s appeal played out, prompting Woodward’s entreaty to the DC appeals court.
“Navarro’s challenge to the district court’s determinations with respect to executive privilege and/or precluding Dr. Navarro from asserting executive privilege as a defense at trial are complicated issues rife with ‘close questions’ or questions ‘that very well could be decided the other way,’” Woodward argued.
“United States v. Peter Navarro is a landmark constitutional case that will eventually determine whether the constitutional separation of powers is preserved, whether executive privilege will continue to exist as a bulwark against partisan attacks by the legislative branch, and whether executive privilege will remain, as President George Washington pioneered, a critical instrument of effective presidential decision-making,” Navarro told The Post Monday in a statement
“That’s worth fighting for on behalf of all Americans.”
In addition to Navarro, Congress referred former White House strategist Steve Bannon, former White House deputy chief of staff for communications Dan Scavino and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Ultimately, the DOJ declined to press charges against Scavino and Meadows, but did go after Bannon, who was not part of the Trump administration at the time of the riot, but claimed executive privilege anyway.
Bannon was convicted in 2022 of two contempt charges and ordered to serve four months in prison and pay a $6,500 fine. He has appealed that conviction.
Separately, Navarro is battling a civil suit from the DOJ over records it contends he did not return to the National Archives and Records Administration after his White House departure.
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