SCOTUS denies stay of sentence for ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro
Written by ABC AUDIO on March 18, 2024
(WASHINGTON) — Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro must report to prison on Tuesday as scheduled, after the Supreme Court on Monday denied the stay of his sentence.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in a short opinion, wrote that he saw “no reason to disagree” with lower courts, which also rejected Navarro’s request.
Navarro’s appeal on the merits remains pending, but he will have to begin serving his sentence in the meantime.
Navarro was ordered on March 11 to report to prison in Miami on Tuesday, to serve a four-month sentence.
He was convicted in September of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide testimony and documents to the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Navarro on Friday filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court in an attempt to remain out of prison as he works to overturn his conviction.
In his filing to the Supreme Court, Navarro’s attorney Stanley Woodward argued Navarro “is indisputably neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety should he be released pending appeal.”
In testimony during Navarro’s trial, former Jan. 6 committee staff director David Buckley said the House panel had been seeking to question Navarro about efforts to delay Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, a plan Navarro dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep” in his book “In Trump Time.”
Navarro unsuccessfully argued that former President Donald Trump had asserted executive privilege over his testimony and document production.
“For the first time in our nation’s history, a senior presidential advisor has been convicted of contempt of Congress after asserting executive privilege over a congressional subpoena,” Woodward’s filing said. “Dr. Navarro has appealed and will raise a number of issues on appeal that he contends are likely to result in the reversal of his conviction, or a new trial.”
Navarro would become the first former Trump adviser to report to prison for actions related to the Jan. 6 attack.
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Laura Romero contributed to this report.
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