The number of people in Donald Trump’s orbit who’ve been convicted of crimes in recent years is so great, The Washington Post once described it as the “remarkable universe of criminality“ surrounding the former president.
The list continues to grow. NBC News reported:
Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison Thursday for criminal contempt of Congress, with federal prosecutors saying he “thumbed his nose” at the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The sentence could’ve been worse: As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin noted, the Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta “to impose six months of imprisonment — the most severe term available under sentencing guidelines.”
At the heart of Navarro’s defense was his interpretation of “executive privilege,” though as the judge tried to explain during the sentencing proceedings, the phrase is not a “magical incantation” to get out of a subpoena.
“What I find disappointing is that in all of this, even today, there’s little acknowledgment of what your obligation is as an American — to cooperate with Congress, to provide them with information that they’re seeking,” Mehta said. “Fine, you think it’s a political hatchet job, it’s domestic terrorists running the committee. They had a job to do and you made it harder. It’s really that simple.”
“You are not a victim,” the jurist continued. “You are not the object of a political prosecution, you aren’t. You have received every process you are due.”
For those who might need a refresher, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
When it comes to the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, there have been some complex dimensions to the probe, but enforcement of subpoenas wasn’t supposed to be one of them. Navarro was a key insider in the Trump White House; he had important information; and he was subpoenaed to cooperate with the bipartisan investigation.
Navarro refused to comply.
With this in mind, congressional leaders — who didn’t want their subpoenas to be seen as optional invitations — voted in 2022 to hold Navarro in contempt and referred the matter to the Justice Department. Two months later, he was charged.
In September, following brief jury deliberations, Navarro was convicted. As for the broader “culture of lawlessness” that has surrounded Trump in recent years, this list might be familiar to regular readers: To be sure, some of the aforementioned men were ultimately pardoned by Trump, who doled out pardons as if they were party favors before exiting the Oval Office, but this doesn’t change the scope of the broader picture. (It also doesn’t help Navarro now.) What’s more, it’s important to emphasize that Trump himself is also facing four criminal indictments, including 91 felony counts, across three jurisdictions, his “law and order” rhetoric notwithstanding. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
