Ex-Trump aide Peter Navarro gets raucous reception at RNC hours after leaving federal prison

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Donald Trump’s former trade adviser Peter Navarro walked out of a federal prison in Miami on Wednesday after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress to a standing ovation as he strode on the stage of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Navarro appeared emotional at times as he waited the applause to die down before he quipped: “I think you folks just want to know if you can see my MAGA tattoo I got there.”

His time in federal prison came after a Washington, DC jury convicted Navarro on two counts of contempt of Congress last year after he defied subpoenas for his testimony in connection with a House committee’s investigation into the events surrounding January 6 and Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

He reported to federal prison authorities in March, becoming the first member of Trump’s inner circle to go to jail for any crime connected to the attack on the Capitol and the former president’s campaign to reverse his election loss.

Before he surrendered, Navarro lashed out at the judges and jurors who heard his case and rejected his appeals, baselessly accusing them of conspiring with Democratic officials.

“Democrat, Democrat, Democrat from start to finish,” he told reporters before walking through a parking lot and into a prison facility.

“This is the partisan weaponization of our judicial system,” he said. “I will gather strength from this.”

Now, months later, Navarro again lashed out at Democrats in Congress and the judge who sentenced him to prison, Amit Mehta, and warned that unless the GOP can gain control of all three branches of the American government, Republicans would not be allowed to commit crimes.

“If we don’t control all three branches of our government...their government will put some of us like me and Steve Bannon in prison and control the rest of us,” he said.

Bannon, like Navarro a former Trump White House aide, was similarly sentenced to four months in prison for his defiance of congressional subpoenas. He reported to a facility in Danbury, Connecticut on July 1.

Several House Republicans — who have tried to rewrite the narrative of the Capitol attack and undermine the convictions of hundreds of people in connection with the assault — called on federal courts to intervene in Bannon’s case.

At least one House Republican filed a brief directly to the Supreme Court, claiming that the House select committee’s “entire process” was “tainted and must be dismissed as a matter of law.”

Bannon and Navarro join half a dozen Trump allies who have served time for obstruction, campaign finance violations, fraud, and other charges surrounding the former president’s 2016 campaign, his real estate empire, and attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump — who is charged with conspiracy and obstruction after leading a national campaign to reverse his loss in states that Joe Biden won, and then failing to stop a mob of his supporters from breaking into the Capitol — has called Navarro “a good man” and “great patriot” who was “treated very unfairly.”

Trump has vowed to issue mass pardons, if elected, to the hundreds of people facing criminal charges for their roles in the assault. He has referred to January 6 defendants as “hostages” while committing to a bogus narrative that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him and “rigged” against him, and refusing to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election, if he loses.