Peter Navarro, Go To Jail!

(Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Photos)

“I’m a Harvard-educated gentleman, however the studying curve after they come at you with the largest legislation agency on the earth could be very, very steep,” Peter Navarro complained throughout his January sentencing listening to for contempt of Congress.

It was a peculiar plea for leniency, managing to convey each disdain for the proceedings and a complete lack of regret. However as a political epitaph for Trump’s COVID-denying econ crank, it’s uniquely becoming.

When subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee, he dashed off a pissy letter lawsplaining govt privilege and flatly refusing to testify or submit paperwork. After the FBI arrested him, he introduced that he’d be representing himself professional se, then proceeded to fireside off a volley of nasty emails to Choose Amit Mehta’s clerk in lieu of pleadings. Finally MAGAworld took pity on him and supplied legal professionals from the Trump secure, who handled the fact of Steve Bannon’s latest conviction on precisely the identical cost for precisely the identical conduct by steadfastly ignoring it. And when a jury convicted Navarro in lower than three hours, he waited till the jurors have been safely out of the constructing to maneuver for a mistrial on the speculation that the panel had been contaminated by going outdoors for air and “paraded” in entrance of protestors.

None of this endeared the defendant to the court docket, which sentenced him to 4 months in jail and yesterday rejected his petition for launch pending attraction.

Like Navarro’s reminder of his instructional pedigree, his motions to remain out of the clink relied closely on his rarified standing as a former presidential advisor. There merely have to be an unwritten exception to the legal guidelines concerning contempt of Congress for many who have served within the White Home! Isn’t it sufficient that Navarro believed that Trump needed him to blow off Congress, even when the previous president took no affirmative steps to truly invoke privilege? Certainly there’s a heightened mens rea requirement for Harvard-educated economists who depend on their very own authorized theories and wind up doing crimes?

Because it seems, the reply to these questions is NO. Navarro’s supposed “substantial” questions of legislation are actually frivolous, significantly his declare that Trump invoked privilege in some imperceptible and but binding vogue — by whispering in Navarro’s ear or maybe telepathically.

“Whether or not a President’s invocation is required to claim govt privilege is just not a considerable query,” Choose Mehta wrote. “Every other reply would imply that the President has unilateral authority to find out when and the way the privilege applies. That’s not the legislation.”

The court docket was equally incredulous on the suggestion that the Nixon circumstances stand for the precedent that govt privilege is “presumptive.”

“What the Nixon Court docket meant by ‘presumptively privileged’ is that courts will assume the privilege applies when invoked, however it isn’t an absolute privilege and will be overcome by countervailing issues,” he went on, including, “If something, President Nixon did what President Trump may have completed right here. By his counsel, he unequivocally claimed govt privilege by shifting to quash the grand jury subpoena. As a result of the court docket discovered no proof that President Trump ever invoked the privilege, no ‘presumption’ ever connected to Defendant’s testimony or information.”

Navarro’s supposedly substantial authorized questions quantity to little greater than pipe desires that the DC Circuit or the Supreme Court docket will determine to explode all precedent to bail his Harvard-educated keister out of this mess of his personal making. And the suggestion that Navarro is a political prisoner … didn’t go over.

“Defendant’s cynical, self-serving declare of political bias poses no query in any respect, not to mention a ‘substantial’ one,” the court docket fumed, instructing Navarro to show himself into the Bureau of Prisons as and when directed.

Ironic that, after doggedly pretending away the Bannon precedent for a yr, Navarro can’t even get the discharge pending attraction that Choose Carl Nichols granted to the putrefying podcaster.

And whereas ATL needs Physician Navarro a protracted and wholesome life, they need to put that stuff concerning the steep studying curve for a Harvard-educated gentleman on his tombstone.

US v. Navarro [Docket via Court Listener

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.