Former White House adviser to Donald Trump, Peter Navarro, was released from a Miami federal prison on Wednesday after serving a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the January 6 congressional committee.
Navarro is expected to quickly travel to Milwaukee to attend the Republican National Convention, where Trump has been formally nominated as the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.
Navarro is one of two Trump associates convicted for not complying with subpoenas from the now-disbanded House Select Committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Trump adviser Steve Bannon began serving his four-month sentence earlier this month at a federal prison in Connecticut.
Navarro, in his 70s, worked as a law library clerk during his time in the prison camp, according to his prison consultant Sam Mangel.
“Everyone has to work,” Mangel said. “It gave him a chance to write.”
Mangel added that Navarro was well-liked and respected by his fellow inmates in prison.
“When I visited him, inmates were coming up to him, high-fiving him,” Mangel said.
Lawmakers had demanded Navarro’s participation in their probe into Trump’s election subversion efforts, citing reports of his involvement in delaying Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential results and his own memoir’s account of election-related schemes.
A federal jury found Navarro guilty last summer after a few hours of deliberations on two counts of contempt, including for failing to produce documents and not appearing for a committee-demanded interview.
Before the trial, Navarro attempted to argue that he was acting on Trump’s orders, who had invoked executive privilege, when he refused to comply with the subpoena.
However, the judge barred this defense, concluding that Navarro had not provided sufficient evidence that Trump had formally asserted the privilege.
Navarro was unsuccessful in an emergency appeal to delay his prison sentence but is now appealing his conviction on its merits.
The federal correctional facility where Navarro has been since March is one of the oldest prison camps in the country, housing fewer than 200 inmates with an aging infrastructure and a large Puerto Rican population.
Nancy Mbamalu
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