MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says Peter Navarro may have just been convicted of one of the “most senseless” crimes of all time.
Navarro, a former White House trade adviser under Donald Trump, was found guilty on Thursday of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 .
Navarro defied a subpoena from the committee for documents and did not take part in a deposition. Each count carries a penalty of 30 days to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
“Just to be clear, it’s not that Navarro hid his involvement in the coup,” Hayes said Thursday on MSNBC. “He self-released this document full of false claims about voter fraud and called it the ‘Navarro Report’ in case anyone wanted to know who wrote it. He wrote about the coup in his book, including his signature political strategy to overturn the election, which he called the “Green Bay Sweep” – a reference to an old football game.”
Navarro too said The Daily Beast Hayes noted that in 2021, he and another former Trump adviser, Steve Bannon, planned to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory and “appeared on this network several times to discuss the coup.”
“So it’s not that Peter Navarro wasn’t willing to talk about the coup,” Hayes said. “He just didn’t want to talk to one group of people about it – the January 6 Committee.”
He noted that several other Trump allies, such as Roger Stone and John Eastman, complied with the committee’s subpoenas but invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Bannon, who also defied a congressional subpoena, was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress in October and sentenced to four months in prison, although he remains free pending an appeal.
“I can’t help but ask, ‘Is this one of the stupidest, most senseless crimes ever committed by anyone?'” Hayes asked.
“Even if Navarro wanted to interfere with the investigation, he could have simply hired a lawyer for a week, the Fifth pleaded in response to any questions. He would be entitled to do so within his constitutional right, others would have done it. And now he would face no more prison time.”