(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has denied former Trump White House official Peter Navarro’s attempt to avoid prison for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena from the politically driven Jan. 6 Commission—meaning that the 74-year-old man must report to jail on Monday.
Navarro was convicted of two misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges last September, and sentenced to four months imprisonment.
The former director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy under the Trump administration had argued that he didn’t flagrantly violate the law, but instead invoked executive privilege as his reason for not complying with the subpoena. Navarro noted that the courts are still reviewing the legal question of whether his actions were legal.
Nevertheless, an Obama-appointed federal judge ordered last month for him to begin his sentence, and the DC appeals court upheld that order in a Thursday decision.
“[Navaro] has not shown that his appeal presents substantial questions of law or fact likely to result in reversal, a new trial, a sentence that does not include a term of imprisonment, or a reduced sentence of imprisonment that is less than the amount of time already served plus the expected duration of the appeal process,” the appeals panel said in its decision.
Navaro’s case, along with that of former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s, marked the first time in roughly four decades that any such cases had been prosecuted by the DOJ, despite recent examples including Lois Lerner, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton, all of whom brazenly disregarded congressional subpoenas during the Obama administration.
Bannon was convicted of two counts and was sentenced to four months behind bars, though he has been free pending appeal.
Navarro had previously characterized the imposed punishment as a “death sentence” given his age.
“Four months in prison at my age is effectively a death sentence if you look at the average lifespan in America,” he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in January. “This to me is why you’ve got to let Donald Trump in 2024 and get him into the oval. … Our economy is in shambles. The border is in shambles. Our enemies are upon us.”
Navarro has not publicly commented on the matter.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
