FILE – Peter Navarro, former director of the White House National Trade Council, speaks during CPAC at National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Md., Feb. 24, 2024. Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, currently in contempt of Congress, is expected to speak at next week’s Republican National Convention, just hours after his release. is expected to be released from a Miami jail on Wednesday, July 17, 2024.Alex Brandon/AP
NEW YORK (AP) — Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, currently jailed for contempt of Congress, is expected to speak at the Republican National Convention next week, just hours after his release.
That’s according to two people familiar with the event, who asked to remain anonymous and declined to share details before they were officially announced.
Navarro is scheduled to be released from a Miami jail on Wednesday, July 17, giving him just enough time to board a plane and reach Milwaukee before the convention ends Thursday. He 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.
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His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The decision to include Navarro on the program suggests that convention organizers may not be afraid to challenge those charged with crimes related to the attack — and the lies that led to it — during the party’s nomination event, which will draw millions of viewers during primetime programming.
Navarro, who served as Trump’s White House trade adviser, made unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the committee investigating the attack.
Before reporting to federal prison in March for a four-month sentence, Navarro called his sentencing the “partisan weaponization of the justice system.”
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He has maintained that he could not cooperate with the committee because the former president had invoked executive privilege. But the court rejected that argument, ruling that Navarro could not prove that Trump had done so.
“When I walk into that prison today, the justice system — as it exists — will have delivered a crippling blow to the constitutional separation of powers and the prerogative of the executive branch,” Navarro said on the day he reported for sentence.
Trump has since called Navarro “a good man” and “a great patriot” who was treated “very unfairly.”
Navarro had asked to remain free while he appealed his conviction to give the courts time to consider his objection. But the federal appeals court in Washington denied his request to delay his sentence, saying it was unlikely his appeal would overturn his conviction.
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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts also declined to intervene, saying in a written order that Navarro had “no reason to disagree” with the appeals court.
Navarro was the second Trump adviser to be convicted of contempt of Congress. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon previously received a four-month sentence that he is now serving.
Trump himself was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying corporate records during his hush-money trial.
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The House of Representatives committee of January 6 spent 18 months investigating the events, interviewing more than 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 was criminally involved in a “multi-pronged conspiracy” to overturn the election results and that he failed to intervene to stop his supporters from storming the Capitol.
Trump has also been charged for his attempts to overturn the elections in Washington DC and Georgia, but both cases are currently on hold.
