Peter Navarro is quite the piece of work — here’s a man who served time in federal prison and remains genuinely convinced that the real criminal in the story was the prosecutor. He put the whole range on display Monday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” where the mere mention of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro was enough to send White House trade adviser Peter Navarro fully off the rails.
“Do me a favor, Steve, when I’m on camera… And you don’t want to talk about something like Jeanine Pirro, never mention her friggin’ name to me, because that woman still refuses to fire John Crabb, the prosecutor who was involved in putting you and me behind bars, okay?” Navarro said.
Bannon, sensing where this was headed, tried to move things along: “Stop, we love Jeanine.” Navarro does not love Jeanine, indeed, he was just getting started.
Managing Partners are Navigating the AI Inflection Point.
New executive research from Ari Kaplan explores how law firm leaders are responding to changing client expectations, evolving economics, talent transformation, and AI governance.
The John Crabb in question is a career federal prosecutor and longtime fixture of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, with a résumé that runs from the Benghazi prosecution to the Jan. 6 cases. His offense, in Navarro’s telling, was helping convict both Navarro and Bannon of contempt of Congress for defying the House committee’s subpoenas, cases that sent each of them to federal prison for four months.
“So don’t you dare to [mention] Judge Jeanine. I, you know, I’m just telling you, that guy, how is that guy still working here, pointing me in a courtroom and said I was above the law. Those… You get my drift. That’s a professional– that guy is on the inside, Steve, of our Justice Department. That guy was responsible for so much… He went after you, he should be gone. Jeanine, are you listening?”
For real, the “our Justice Department” is chilling — and telling. The whole grievance rests on the premise that the DOJ belongs to MAGA now, and that a prosecutor who did the actual job of prosecuting is the one who committed the offense. Crabb’s sin was pointing at Navarro in a courtroom and saying he acted as though he were above the law. Which, given that Navarro is on this podcast demanding a prosecutor be purged for prosecuting him, is holding up reasonably well as a legal theory.
And here’s the kicker! Crabb has already been on the receiving end of punishment for the high crime of doing his job. He was among the senior D.C. prosecutors demoted and reassigned to misdemeanor work back in the early days of the administration’s housecleaning of the office. Navarro isn’t calling for a head; he’s calling for a head that’s already rolled, and he’s furious that the man is still permitted to draw a government paycheck at all.
AI Is Reshaping Legal Practice—But Tools Aren’t The Real Differentiator.
Explore the mindset, cultural shifts, and training strategies that define the AI‑savvy lawyer, revealing why human judgment, standardized competence, and integrated learning—not technology alone—will shape the future of the profession.
None of this lands on Pirro at a good moment. She has been the improbable U.S. Attorney since jump, installed off the evening cable lineup, then presiding over an office where grand juries kept no-billing her cases and one prosecution got handed to a dance photographer. And now she’s absorbing incoming from her own side. Navarro made a point of reminding her that “the boss said ‘she choked'” on the Reflecting Pool case, the same episode that had Trump publicly musing about replacing her days earlier.
Strip away the “friggin'”s and the on-camera laughing fit and what’s left is a sitting White House adviser using a livestream to instruct the top federal prosecutor in the capital on which of her line attorneys to fire. That is the weaponization of the Justice Department stated out loud with absolutely no subtext left to decode.
Earlier: Trump Taps Judge Jeanine For Key DOJ Role After Consulting Evening Cable Lineup
No Bills Are Only The Beginning Of Jeanine Pirro’s F-Ups
Jeanine Pirro Brought In Dance Photographer To Prosecute Lawmakers And It Went Exactly As You’d Expect
Donald Trump Likely To Fire Jeanine Pirro For Having One Foot In Reality
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1