Former Donald Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro should be sentenced to six months in prison and slapped with a $200,000 fine for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee, federal prosecutors argued Thursday.
Navarro, who was convicted of contempt of Congress in September, “thumbed his nose at Congressional authority” and deployed a “bad-faith strategy” to avoid answering questions about the circumstances that led up to the 2021 attack on the Capitol, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo filed Thursday night. “[T]he Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi further argued in the memo that Navarro, “like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation.” The recommended punishment—which is at “the top end” of sentencing guidelines—is warranted by Navarro’s “sustained, deliberate contempt of Congress,” she added.
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Navarro is set to be sentenced on Jan. 25. He could become the second senior Trump official to face jail time for defying a Jan. 6 committee after Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison on similar charges. Banon’s sentence is currently suspended during an appeal.
In their own sentencing memo, Navarro’s lawyers argued their client had merely been following what he “reasonably believed was an instruction by the former President not to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoenas.” “History is replete those to have refused to comply with congressional subpoenas, and Dr. Navarro’s sentence should not be disproportionate from those similarly situated individuals,” the attorneys added.
