(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“I’m a Harvard-educated gentleman, but the learning curve when they come at you with the biggest law firm in the world is very, very steep,” Peter Navarro complained during his January sentencing hearing for contempt of Congress.
It was a peculiar plea for leniency, managing to convey both disdain for the proceedings and a total lack of remorse. But as a political epitaph for Trump’s COVID-denying econ crank, it’s uniquely fitting.
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When subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee, he dashed off a pissy letter lawsplaining executive privilege and flatly refusing to testify or submit documents. After the FBI arrested him, he announced that he’d be representing himself pro se, then proceeded to fire off a volley of nasty emails to Judge Amit Mehta’s clerk in lieu of pleadings. Eventually MAGAworld took pity on him and provided lawyers from the Trump stable, who dealt with the reality of Steve Bannon’s recent conviction on exactly the same charge for exactly the same conduct by steadfastly ignoring it. And when a jury convicted Navarro in less than three hours, he waited until the jurors were safely out of the building to move for a mistrial on the theory that the panel had been contaminated by going outside for air and “paraded” in front of protestors.
None of this endeared the defendant to the court, which sentenced him to four months in jail and yesterday rejected his petition for release pending appeal.
Like Navarro’s reminder of his educational pedigree, his motions to stay out of the clink relied heavily on his rarified status as a former presidential advisor. There simply must be an unwritten exception to the laws regarding contempt of Congress for those who have served in the White House! Isn’t it enough that Navarro believed that Trump wanted him to blow off Congress, even if the former president took no affirmative steps to actually invoke privilege? Surely there’s a heightened mens rea requirement for Harvard-educated economists who rely on their own legal theories and wind up doing crimes?
As it turns out, the answer to those questions is NO. Navarro’s supposed “substantial” questions of law are in fact frivolous, particularly his claim that Trump invoked privilege in some imperceptible and yet binding fashion — by whispering in Navarro’s ear or perhaps telepathically.
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“Whether a President’s invocation is required to assert executive privilege is not a substantial question,” Judge Mehta wrote. “Any other answer would mean that the President has unilateral authority to determine when and how the privilege applies. That is not the law.”
The court was similarly incredulous at the suggestion that the Nixon cases stand for the precedent that executive privilege is “presumptive.”
“What the Nixon Court meant by ‘presumptively privileged’ is that courts will assume the privilege applies when invoked, but it is not an absolute privilege and can be overcome by countervailing considerations,” he went on, adding, “If anything, President Nixon did what President Trump could have done here. Through his counsel, he unequivocally claimed executive privilege by moving to quash the grand jury subpoena. Because the court found no evidence that President Trump ever invoked the privilege, no ‘presumption’ ever attached to Defendant’s testimony or records.”
Navarro’s supposedly substantial legal questions amount to little more than pipe dreams that the DC Circuit or the Supreme Court will decide to blow up all precedent to bail his Harvard-educated keister out of this mess of his own making. And the suggestion that Navarro is a political prisoner … did not go over.
“Defendant’s cynical, self-serving claim of political bias poses no question at all, let alone a ‘substantial’ one,” the court fumed, instructing Navarro to turn himself into the Bureau of Prisons as and when directed.
Ironic that, after doggedly pretending away the Bannon precedent for a year, Navarro can’t even get the release pending appeal that Judge Carl Nichols granted to the putrefying podcaster.
And while ATL wishes Doctor Navarro a long and healthy life, they should put that stuff about the steep learning curve for a Harvard-educated gentleman on his tombstone.
US v. Navarro [Docket via Court Listener
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.