Peter Navarro, Trump ex-aide jailed for contempt of Congress, set to be released from a Miami federal prison
MIAMI - Peter Navarro, an ex-aide to former President Donald Trump, is set to be released from a low security federal correctional facility in South Florida on Wednesday morning.
Navarro was found guilty in September of contempt of Congress charges for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
After his release, he will fly to Milwaukee where he is expected to speak at the Republican National Convention before it wraps up on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
Navarro, who served as a Trump White House trade adviser, promoted baseless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the committee investigating the attack.
Before he reported to federal prison in March for a four-month sentence, Navarro called his conviction the "partisan weaponization of the judicial system."
He has maintained that he couldn't cooperate with the committee because the former president had invoked executive privilege. But the court rejected that argument, finding Navarro couldn't prove Trump actually had.
"When I walk in that prison today, the justice system - such as it is - will have done a crippling blow to the constitutional separation of powers and executive privilege," Navarro said the day he reported for his sentence.
Trump, meanwhile, has called Navarro "a good man" and "great patriot" who was "treated very unfairly."
Navarro had asked to stay free while he appealed his conviction to give the courts time to consider his challenge. But Washington's federal appeals court denied his bid to stave off his sentence, finding his appeal wasn't likely to reverse his conviction.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts also refused to step in, saying in a written order that Navarro had "no basis to disagree" with the appeals court.
Navarro was the second Trump aide convicted of contempt of Congress charges. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon previously received a four-month sentence that he is serving now.
Trump himself was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records in his criminal hush money trial.
The Jan. 6 House committee spent 18 months investigating the events, interviewing over 1,000 witnesses, holding 10 hearings and obtaining more than 1 million pages of documents. In its final report, the panel ultimately concluded that Trump criminally engaged in a "multi-part conspiracy" to overturn the election results and failed to act to stop his supporters from storming the Capitol.
Trump has also been charged for his efforts to overturn the election in both Washington, D.C., and in Georgia, but both cases are currently on hold.
