Jailed former Trump adviser Navarro to address RNC, AP sources tell AP

NEW YORK (AP) — Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, jailed for contempt of Congress, 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 are officially announced.

Navarro is scheduled 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 enough time to board a plane and travel to Milwaukee before the convention ends Thursday. He was convicted in September of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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

The decision to include Navarro on the program suggests that convention organizers may not shy away from addressing those accused of crimes related to the attack — and the lies that helped trigger it — during the party’s nominating event, which will draw millions of viewers over several days of prime-time programming.

Navarro, who served as Trump’s White House trade adviser, has made baseless allegations of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election and has been subpoenaed by the committee investigating the attack.

Before reporting to federal prison in March to serve a four-month sentence, Navarro called his conviction a “partisan weapon of the justice system.”

He claimed he couldn’t cooperate with the commission because the former president had invoked executive privilege. But the court rejected that argument, finding that Navarro couldn’t prove that Trump had actually done so.

“When I walk into this prison today, the justice system – as it stands – will have dealt a fatal blow to the constitutional separation of powers and executive privilege,” Navarro said on the day he reported for sentencing.

Trump, for his part, called Navarro a “good man” and “great patriot” who was “treated very unfairly.”

Navarro had asked to remain free while he appealed his conviction to give the courts time to consider his request. But the federal appeals court in Washington rejected his request to delay his sentencing, saying his appeal would not overturn his conviction. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts also declined to intervene.

Navarro is the second Trump adviser to be convicted of contempt of Congress. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison, which he is currently serving.

Trump himself was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records during his criminal trial for extracting silence.

The House January 6 Committee spent 18 months investigating the events, interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses, holding 10 hearings, and obtaining more than a million pages of documents. In its final report, the committee concluded that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-party conspiracy” to overturn the election results and failed to act to prevent his supporters from storming the Capitol.

Trump has also been indicted for his efforts to overturn the election in Washington, D.C., and Georgia, but both cases are pending.