MILWAUKEE — Peter Navarro left federal prison Wednesday and went straight to the Republican National Convention, where he warned Republicans that they could be next if Democrats keep control of Washington.
“I went to prison so you wouldn’t have to,” he told convention delegates. “I am your wake-up call.”
Mr. Navarro, who served as President Trump’s trade adviser, was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about Mr. Trump to the Democratic-led House Jan. 6 committee. The Justice Department under President Biden prosecuted him and imprisoned him for four months in Miami.
The crowd welcomed Mr. Navarro with chants of USA and booed lustily when he mentioned the roles of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Attorney General Merrick Garland, an Obama-appointed federal judge and a jury in the District of Columbia in putting him behind bars.
“If we don’t control our government, their government will control us. If we don’t control all three branches of our government —legislative, executive and judicial — their government will put someone like me and Steve Bannon in prison and control the rest of us,” Mr. Navarro said.
Mr. Navarro cited executive privilege as a senior adviser to the former president when he refused to talk to the committee House Democrats created to investigate the events of Jan. 6, 2021. The House said that privilege didn’t apply.
He was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress.
His last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court failed.
Toward the close of his remarks Wednesday, Mr. Navarro was joined by his fiancee. He gave her a big smooch and praised her for supporting him during his time in prison.
“When they put people like me in prison and fire figurative and now literal bullets at Donald Trump, they also assault our families,” he said.
Mr. Navarro is part of a series of convention speakers who have decried an overzealous Justice Department. Chief among their complaints are the two federal criminal cases brought against Mr. Trump. A judge dismissed one of them this week, and the other was derailed by the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling this month.
The convention heard Tuesday from Savannah Chrisley, who said her family, which was featured on a reality television show, was targeted for being the “Trumps of the South.”
Mr. Navarro’s speaker slot at the convention suggests that Mr. Trump is ready to confront the events of Jan. 6.
Before reporting to federal prison in March, Mr. Navarro said his conviction was a “partisan weaponization of the judicial system.”
Mr. Trump has described his former trade adviser as a “good man” and “great patriot” who “was treated very unfairly.”
“The Biden administration treated him very, very badly. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is,” he said when Mr. Navarro reported to prison.
Mr. Navarro became an outspoken critic of the Bureau of Prisons during his sentence.
Mr. Navarro, a Washington Times columnist, wrote that the bureau’s failure “to implement two major federal laws mandating sentence reductions for nonviolent and first-time offenders costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually even as it increases recidivism risk and the crime rate.”
Mr. Navarro said the criminal justice system’s sentencing is unjust and the length of a prison sentence should match the crime and be “sufficient to deter future criminal behavior.”
Mr. Bannon, another former adviser to Mr. Trump, was also sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress after defying the House Jan. 6 committee. He started serving his sentence this month.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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