He May Be First Trump Aide to Serve Time Over 2020 Vote

UPDATE Mar 11, 2024 3:01 PM CDT

Former White House aide Peter Navarro has been ordered to report to prison on March 19 to begin serving a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena, reports CNN. Navarro, 74, is thus poised to become the first top Donald Trump adviser to serve jail time over efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, per Politico. Navarro, an economist, is still hoping a three-judge panel will allow him to remain free while he appeals his conviction.

Feb 8, 2024 3:35 PM CST

A federal judge on Thursday denied Trump White House official Peter Navarro's bid to remain out of prison while he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Navarro was sentenced last month to four months behind bars after being found guilty of defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House Jan. 6 committee. The former White House trade adviser under Donald Trump had asked to be free while he fights that conviction and sentence in higher courts, the AP reports.

But US District Judge Amit Mehta said Navarro must report to serve his sentence when ordered by the Bureau of Prisons, unless Washington's federal appeals court blocks Mehta's order. The judge said Navarro hasn't shown that any of the issues he will raise on appeal are "substantial" questions of law. Among other arguments, Navarro has said his prosecution was motivated by political bias, but Mehta said Navarro offered "no actual proof" to support that claim. "Defendant's cynical, self-serving claim of political bias poses no question at all, let alone a 'substantial' one," wrote Mehta, who was appointed to the federal court in Washington by President Barack Obama.

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Navarro has said he couldn't cooperate with the committee because Trump had invoked executive privilege. The judge barred him from making that argument at trial, however, finding that he didn't show Trump had actually invoked it, per the AP. Navarro told the judge before receiving his punishment in January that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack had led him to believe that it accepted his invocation of executive privilege. An attorney for Navarro didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

(More Peter Navarro stories.)