Speaking on CNN, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig provided this week a grim assessment of the prospects for former Trump adviser Peter Navarro as his trial gets underway. Navarro is facing criminal allegations of contempt of Congress stemming from his highly publicized refusals to comply with the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot and various circumstances that led up to it.
Steve Bannon, another longtime ally to the former president, faced a federal criminal prosecution on similar grounds and was convicted and sentenced to several months in prison, though he has not served any of this sentence, with his case now moving through appeals. With Navarro, Honig sees the case heading towards a likely, though not yet certain, conviction. The federal judge overseeing proceedings recently pushed the case through to trial with a rejection of arguments around purported claims of executive privilege supposedly originating with former President Donald Trump that would have covered the answers Navarro would have provided to the January 6 committee.
The judge found there was no sufficiently actionable evidence Trump had made a specific assertion of such privilege that applied here. An assertion of executive privilege over prospective testimony from Navarro to another Congressional committee didn’t suffice, and neither did Navarro’s claimed recollection of a phone conversation with the former president. While the powers of executive privilege are broad, such authorities remain subject to recognized procedure.
“There’s kind of no defense at this point,” Honig told CNN of Navarro, comparing him to Bannon. “He was going to make this executive privilege defense, but the judge barred it. He said no. There’s no evidence of it. This is going to be just a defiance and appeal trial. Peter Navarro’s going to basically just hope somebody on the jury nullifies, meaning says, ‘I don’t care about the law and the facts; I’m letting him go.’ That happens sometimes, but he’s really going to be playing for appeal here.”
Raw Story flagged Honig’s remarks. Check out the video below:
