Peter Navarro, Trump ex-aide jailed for contempt of Congress, will address RNC, AP sources say

NEW YORK (AP) — Former White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, who is currently in jail on contempt of Congress charges, is expected to speak at next week’s Republican National Convention just hours after his release.

That’s according to two people familiar with the event’s schedule who spoke on condition of anonymity to share details before they were formally announced.

Navarro is set to be released from a Miami prison on Wednesday, July 17, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online database of current inmates. That would give him just enough time to board a plane and make it to Milwaukee before the convention wraps 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.

His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The decision to include Navarro on the program suggests convention organizers may not shy away from those who have been charged with crimes related to the attack — and the lies that helped spur it — at the party’s nominating event, which will draw millions of viewers across days of prime-time programming.

Navarro, who served as a Trump’s White House trade adviser, promoted baseless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the committee investigating the attack.

What to know about the 2024 Election

• Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024.
• AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.
• We want to hear from you: If you didn’t vote in the 2020 election, would anything change your mind about voting?
• Read the latest: Follow AP’s live coverage of this year’s election.
  

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.