Peter Navarro, who served as former President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, said he disagrees with the Trump team’s plans to argue the unconstitutionality of the president’s second impeachment trial instead of focusing on election integrity.
Navarro also urged the president to fire his legal team to hire Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has already signaled a willingness to defend the president, should Trump ask.
“That lawyer that you just put on, you gotta get rid of those guys. These people don’t understand. This is a political trial,” Navarro said in a Friday interview on Newsmax, and the comment was made after the host played a clip of Trump attorney Bruce Castor discussing the team’s defense plan.
Presenting such an argument is a moot point because 45 Republican senators voted in late January to halt the impeachment trial on the grounds that impeaching a president who had already left office is unconstitutional, the former Trump official added. Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives in January for “incitement of insurrection” after he encouraged his supporters who attended a rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 to march to the Capitol to express their displeasure with Congress’s intent to certify President Biden’s electoral victory. The crowd eventually turned into a deadly riot.
Noting that, he said, “So, why not provide an affirmative defense? Now, the way to do that is you get somebody like Matt Gaetz as your lead attorney instead of that stiff you had on and then you use the Navarro report and other reports that have been put out, which have been excellent, as your exhibits A, B, C, and D.”
Navarro’s idea for Gaetz to represent the attorney came days after the Florida lawmaker told the War Room Pandemic podcast that he’d have to resign from Congress to defend the president, but that he was willing to if Trump asked.
“Absolutely. If the [former] president called me and wanted me to defend him on the floor of the Senate, that would be the top priority in my life,” the Florida congressman said. “I would leave my House seat, I would leave my home, I would do anything I had to do, to ensure the greatest president in my lifetime … got a full-throated defense that was crouched down, that wasn’t in fear of losing some moderate Republican senator but that was worthy of the fight that he gave to the great people of this country for four years.”
