Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Peter Navarro

PETER NAVARRO INSISTS HE CAN EXONERATE TRUMP BUT WON’T COOPERATE WITH CAPITOL RIOT INVESTIGATORS

“Mr. Navarro appears to have information directly relevant to the select committee’s investigation into the causes of the January 6th attack on the Capitol,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, said in a statement. “He hasn’t been shy about his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has even discussed the former President’s support for those plans. More than 500 witnesses have provided information in our investigation, and we expect Mr. Navarro to do so as well.”

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Navarro blasted the inquiry as a “partisan witch hunt” and appeared to suggest he would not cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee. He claimed that news of the subpoena had been leaked to key members of the press before he received it. Navarro also questioned why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Capitol Police, and the Pentagon left the “perimeter unguarded” at the Capitol.

“As the domestic terrorists running the January 6 partisan witch hunt are well aware, President Trump has invoked Executive Privilege; and it is not my privilege to waive. They should negotiate any waiver of the privilege with the president and his attorneys directly, not through me,” Navarro said. “Pence betrayed Trump. Marc Short is a Koch Network dog. Meadows is a fool and a coward. Cheney and Kinzinger are useful idiots for Nancy Pelosi and the woke Left.”

Short was chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, who has cooperated with the panel following a subpoena. Navarro was also referring to Mark Meadows, who was White House chief of staff, and Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican members of the Jan. 6 committee.

Navarro previously told the Washington Examiner that he could prove former President Donald Trump did nothing wrong during the events of Jan. 6, which was the day lawmakers met to certify the results of the 2020 election — a process that was disrupted by hundreds of rioters storming the Capitol. Navarro said he could send every member of the Jan. 6 committee a copy of his In Trump Time book and suggested he would resist cooperating with the panel.

In his book and in numerous interviews, Navarro talked about a plot he concocted with Bannon, a Trump ally who joined the former president’s 2016 campaign and spent much of the first year in the administration as White House chief strategist, to implement the “Green Bay Sweep,” in which they would enlist members of Congress and pressure Pence to stall the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6. The goal was to get the state delegations in Congress to select the next president. Navarro said the plan was upended by the violence that transpired on Capitol Hill that day.

“Their narrative is that Trump instigated the violence. My fact-based claim is that the last thing Trump, Bannon, or me wanted that day was violence because we needed peace and calm on Capitol Hill to implement to Green Bay Sweep,” he told the Washington Examiner. “The only reason why we weren’t able to execute the strategy was because of that violence.”

Navarro argued the riot disrupting his plan helps prove that Trump did not want violence to occur on Jan. 6. He also told the Washington Examiner that the violence on Jan. 6 might have been orchestrated by liberal groups.

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While serving as trade adviser to Trump, Navarro released a three-volume report outlining what he said were ways in which the 2020 election was stolen. The Washington Examiner previously analyzed this report and found a number of errors. The Jan. 6 committee referenced the report in its subpoena of Navarro.

Last December, Navarro defied a subpoena from a different congressional committee investigating the COVID-19 health crisis, citing executive privilege. He said in an op-ed he would not “spend a single dime on attorneys.”