Federal prosecutors have for a sentence of six months in prison for Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser to President Trump, for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Prosecutors said they were seeking a sentence at the top end of the guidelines because of his “bad-faith strategy” of “sustained, deliberate contempt of Congress,” the New York Times reports. “The defendant, like the rioters at the Capitol, put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation,” they wrote in a sentencing memo. “The defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law.”
The memo echoed the sentence recommendation for Stephen Bannon, who was ultimately given four months in prison for defying his own subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. The sentencing would make Navarro the second Trump official to be sentenced for ignoring the committee’s subpoenas. Navarro's sentencing is set for Jan. 25. He was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in September. This week, Judge Amit Mehta turned down a request from his lawyers to dismiss the verdict and convene a new trial. Navarro argued that jurors were exposed to political bias while lunching outside the courthouse where demonstrators were protesting. “The evidence establishes that the jurors only interacted with each other” and a court security officer, Mehta said. Navarro’s lawyers argued that the subpoena violated the notion that a president could direct his subordinates to refuse to testify before Congress, citing executive immunity.
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