(NewsReady.com) – A federal court found Peter Navarro guilty of contempt of Congress in September 2023. Last month, a judge sentenced the ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump to prison time. He recently stated that he might be incarcerated soon.
On January 30, Navarro appeared on Newsmax’s “The Balance,” hosted by Eric Bolling. The former White House official said he thought the four-month prison term he received for multiple counts of contempt of Congress was “quite harsh.”
The former official told Bolling that his legal team appealed the sentence almost immediately. Still, he said that he could “be in prison within less than 60 days.” The Trump loyalist explained that he thinks the current president wants him to go to prison right away, but Navarro is waiting to see what the judge has to say about it.
Navarro’s prison sentence relates to his refusal to comply with subpoenas that Congress issued to him. One of them required him to turn over documents related to the January 6 attack on the capital, and the other was to appear for testimony. In both cases, Navarro refused.
Federal prosecutors argued that he displayed a disregard for the investigation and an “utter contempt for the rule of law.” The judge in the case sentenced him to prison time and also ordered him to pay $9,500.
Navarro tried to claim executive privilege, but President Joe Biden had already waived it for all of the information related to the congressional investigation. The former president also had not asserted executive privilege. Former staffers do not have the authority to invoke the privilege of a president.
Still, the former Trump adviser claims the contempt charges were a violation of the separation of powers. He said he thinks he is going to “determine the future of the constitutional separation of powers” in regard to executive privilege and noted that if he could go to prison, so could the former POTUS.
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