Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro on April 2 filed another request with the U.S. Supreme Court in a bid to avoid prison time after spending about two weeks in prison on contempt of Congress charges.
His lawyers submitted a petition of reconsideration of an emergency request that he filed last month, which was denied at the time by Chief Justice John Roberts. Mr. Navarro faces a four-month prison term.
A brief opinion was issued by Justice Roberts, who wrote that the “application concerns only the question” of whether Mr. Navarro has “met his burden to establish his entitlement to relief under the Bail Reform Act” after appeals courts rejected his arguments. Lower courts have found that the former Trump aide had forfeited a challenge that he didn’t need to appear before Congress.
“I see no basis to disagree with the determination that Navarro forfeited those arguments in the release proceeding, which is distinct from his pending appeal on the merits,” Justice Roberts wrote.
Rules for the U.S. Supreme Court allow for emergency applications that were denied by a single justice to be resent to another justice. The April 2 petition asked for Justice Neil Gorsuch, an appointee of then-President Donald Trump, to review Mr. Navarro’s request.
The petition comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on April 1 dismissed his appeal in a brief order.
Mr. Navarro, who previously served as a trade adviser for President Trump, was subpoenaed twice for testimony by the now-dissolved House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach at the U.S. Capitol. He didn’t comply with the request before he was charged with contempt of Congress and was sentenced in January to four months in prison and a $9,500 fine.
He is currently serving his term at the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami, or FCI Miami, described as a minimum security institution.
After Justice Roberts denied Mr. Navarro’s request, he held a press conference in the prison’s parking lot and said his prosecution and sentence were politically motivated.
“When I walk into that prison today, the justice system, such as it is, will have done a crippling blow to the Constitution’s separation of powers and executive privilege,” Mr. Navarro told reporters. “The second and related story has to do with the emergence of ‘lawfare’ and the partisan weaponization of our justice system, which we have seen come to this country with a vengeance since the coming of Donald John Trump as president.”
Mr. Navarro was found guilty of defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House Jan. 6 committee. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, refused his push to stave off his prison sentence.
He has maintained that he couldn’t cooperate with the committee because President Trump had invoked executive privilege. Lower courts have rejected that argument, finding that he couldn’t prove that President Trump had actually invoked it.
The Supreme Court is also separately preparing to hear arguments on whether President Trump himself has presidential immunity from charges alleging that he interfered in the 2020 election.
His attorneys have argued that he didn’t ignore the subpoena but was trying to avoid running afoul of executive privilege objections that President Trump had raised. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit took the case under consideration.
