Former White House commerce adviser Peter Navarro outdoors the federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 31. Navarro was discovered responsible on two counts of felony contempt for defying a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

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Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Former White House commerce adviser Peter Navarro outdoors the federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 31. Navarro was discovered responsible on two counts of felony contempt for defying a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro was discovered responsible Thursday of two counts of felony contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

A federal jury deliberated for lower than 4 hours earlier than issuing its verdict. Navarro, 74, joins Steve Bannon because the second former Trump official to be prosecuted for not cooperating with the choose committee.

Navarro, who served as director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy below Trump, was initially subpoenaed by the committee in February 2022, looking for his testimony and that he flip over paperwork associated to the investigation. The subpoena from the Democratic-led choose committee got here after Navarro wrote about his efforts to delay the certification of the 2020 election ends in a memoir he revealed after leaving the White House.

In response to the subpoena, Navarro argued he was immune from testimony as a result of he was shielded by govt privilege by way of former President Trump.

That line of protection was dismissed, nevertheless, forward of Navarro’s trial in a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta. With his conviction, Navarro now faces as much as one 12 months in jail and a advantageous of as much as $100,000 for every cost.

Thursday’s verdict capped a two-day trial that featured lower than three hours of witness testimony — none of which got here from the protection group. Prosecutors stated Navarro “chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump” over abiding by the congressional subpoena.

“Our government only works when people play by the rules and it only works when people are held accountable when they do not. When a person intentionally and deliberately chooses to defy a congressional subpoena, that is a crime,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi stated in her closing arguments on Thursday, in keeping with Politico.

Because Navarro could not make the argument about govt privilege, the prosecution solely needed to show that the previous aide acquired the subpoena, that the knowledge the committee sought was related to its investigation and that Navarro deliberately selected to not adhere to subpoena’s calls for.

Attorneys for Navarro sought to clear the previous Trump adviser by asking the courtroom at one level to contemplate that their shopper did not have any of the paperwork sought by the committee, the Washington Post reported. But Navarro by no means truly advised the courtroom he didn’t have the paperwork the committee was after.

At one other level within the trial, the protection tried to argue that prosecutors could not show that Navarro deliberately missed his scheduled deposition with the committee, in keeping with the Post. “We don’t know that he wasn’t stuck on the Metro,” protection legal professional Stanley E. Woodward advised the decide. When the decide requested if he was certainly hindered from attending, Woodward responded, “I don’t know.”

In looking for Navarro’s cooperation, the Jan. 6 committee stated his personal guide detailed how he was concerned in efforts to delay Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s win within the 2020 election, in addition to overturn the outcomes.

Navarro reportedly labored with Bannon and others to develop efforts to delay certification of the election outcomes, the panel stated. In his memoir, In Trump Time: My Journal of America’s Plague Year, Navarro described his work because the “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.” He wrote a few technique referred to as the “Green Bay Sweep” designed to assist reverse the outcomes of the election in key states gained by Biden.

As the trial started earlier this week, Navarro posted on X, the social media platform previously often known as Twitter, writing, “Trial starts in an hour I love the smell of justice in the morning. Can’t smell a thing.” He additionally argued on-line Tuesday that he was on trial for “an alleged crime no senior White House official ever charged with.”

This marks the second responsible verdict of a former Trump aide for failing to cooperate with the House choose committee’s efforts to research the Jan. 6 assault. Bannon, who served as a chief strategist and counselor to the previous president, was sentenced to four months in prison final October for defying a subpoena from the committee, however stays free pending an attraction.

Navarro’s conviction is just the newest flip within the ongoing authorized fallout from Jan. 6. As Trump is operating to win a second time period in workplace, he faces 91 felony indictments in state and federal courtroom, together with 4 federal costs tied to his alleged efforts to overturn the election outcomes.