Peter Navarro, a former trade adviser to Donald Trump, will begin a four-month jail term for contempt of congress in federal prison on Tuesday. Navarro, 74, was convicted last year after ignoring a subpoena from a House committee investigating the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 2021. A Supreme Court justice denied his last-ditch appeal to stay out of prison on Monday. He will be the first Trump-era official to be jailed for contempt of Congress. Navarro has until 14:00 local time (18:00 GMT) to report to a federal prison in Miami to begin his sentence. The facility, FCI Miami, is a low security facility with an adjacent minimum-security camp. At the end of January, three years after the attack by former President Trump's supporters on Congress, Navarro was given the sentence and fined $9,500 (£7,500) fine. Along with advising on trade, Navarro worked on strategies to try to overturn the 2020 election and keep Trump in the White House. People who stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021 sought to stop lawmakers from certifying that Trump lost the election. Navarro was first served with a subpoena by the US House of Representatives select committee in February 2022, but did not hand over any of the emails or documents requested. When contacted by the committee, Navarro said that Trump had instructed him to cite executive privilege, a legal principle allowing some White House communications to be kept private. The judge in the case ruled Trump could not make that request or executive privilege did not shield Navarro from the subpoena. Navarro had sought to remain free while appealing his conviction, with his attorneys arguing that he was "indisputably" not a flight risk or threat to the public. Earlier this week, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr refused to delay the sentence. In a 2021 memoir — entitled In Trump Time — Navarro said he was the architect of a strategy to challenge the 2020 election's results that made Joe Biden president. The plan called for congressional Republicans to delay certification of Biden's electoral victory, a standard procedure that was scheduled for Jan. 6, 2021. The House committee noted that Navarro's claims of electoral fraud had been repeatedly determined to be baseless by state and local officials. Another Trump-era official, former campaign strategist Steve Bannon, was also convicted of two counts of contempt for refusing the committee's summons and sentenced to four months in jail. Bannon, however, has been allowed to stay out of prison while his defense team appeals. — BBC
