Court of Appeals rejects Peter Navarro’s request to stay out of prison

Peter Navarro, trade adviser to Donald J. Trump during his presidency, will report to prison Thursday after a federal appeals court refused his near-final attempt to remain free while appealing his conviction for contempt of Congress.

The ruling meant that, barring an 11th-hour Supreme Court intervention, which his lawyers previously vowed to invoke if necessary, Mr. Navarro will have to obey a Bureau of Prisons order and report to a federal prison on Tuesday in Miami. , which would make him the first senior aide to Mr. Trump to serve time for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Navarro, 74, was sentenced to four months in prison in January for refusing to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The committee had subpoenaed Mr. Navarro for documents and testimony, seeking his testimony about a plan he devised to delay the certification of the election by holding up the counting of electoral votes.

After receiving the subpoena, Mr. Navarro dismissed the committee based on the belief, he argued at trial, that Mr. Trump had instructed him not to testify and to assert executive privilege. professions.

Lawyers for Mr. Navarro have consistently argued that his case raises new legal questions about executive privilege and is likely to lead to new insights into Congress’s oversight of the executive branch. They have also pointed to Stephen K. Bannon, another aide to Mr. Trump, who was allowed to remain free while he appealed an identical sentence for similarly obstructing the commission.

But a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed, writing that he had “failed to demonstrate that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact likely to result in a reversal, a retrial, a sentence which shall not include imprisonment or a reduction in sentence less than the time already served.”

The order upheld a ruling by Judge Amit P. Mehta, who presided over the trial, in February turned down Mr. Navarro’s request to remain free while his appeal is heard.