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The conviction of former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro could spur another one of Donald Trump's close allies to flip on the former president to avoid a similar fate, according to a former prosecutor.
Navarro, who frequently pushed the false claims the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, was found guilty by a jury of two counts of contempt of Congress on Thursday after he refused to comply with a subpoena issued to him by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Navarro became the second Trump ally to be convicted of contempt of Congress. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has appealed a four-month jail sentence after a jury also found him guilty of two misdemeanor counts in July 2022.
"I think it does have a subtle impact on some of Trump's co-defendants, and particularly in the Mar-a-Lago case," legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said on MSNBC on Thursday, referring to the federal classified documents case, in which the former president has pleaded not guilty to all 40 charges.
Vance singled out Mar-a-Lago valet and Trump aide Walt Nauta, who is accused of eight felony offenses including conspiring to obstruct justice and providing false statements in relation to the former president's alleged attempt to hinder the FBI's attempt to retrieve the sensitive materials from his Florida home. Nauta has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
"Walt Nauta, who really has been quite literally the body man for the president...will now have to make a decision," Vance told MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle.
"Is he, like Navarro, willing to go to prison for Trump? Or does he need to correct course now while he still has time?" said the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. She was nominated by then President Barack Obama in 2009.
Former federal prosecutor Michael McAuliffe also told Newsweek on Thursday that lawyers for Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker who was also charged alongside Trump in a superseding indictment, may also consider persuading their clients to cooperate with the federal investigation. De Oliveira pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts related to an alleged attempt to delete surveillance footage from the Mar-a-Lago estate.
"In theory, a defendant's lawyer should be constantly reevaluating the likelihood of conviction for the client and assessing whether cooperation is in the client's best interest," McAuliffe added.
McAuliffe made the suggestion after it was confirmed that Mar-a-Lago IT worker Yuscil Taveras provided potentially damning evidence for the three defendants in order to avoid facing perjury charges in relation to his previous testimony.
Nauta's legal team has been contacted for comment via email.
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Navarro ignored the subpoena issued to him by the January 6 panel because of loyalty to Trump.
"Peter Navarro made a choice. He chose not abide by the congressional subpoena," prosecutor Elizabeth Aloi said. "The defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over compliance to the subpoena."
Navarro had attempted to argue that he could not comply with the subpoena as Trump had invoked executive privilege, which grants the president power to prevent certain documents or details related to the executive branch from becoming public.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled the former White House adviser could not use the executive privilege defense during the trial as there was not enough evidence that Trump had invoked it.
Following the jury's guilty verdict, Navarro said he plans on appealing the decision based on the issues surrounding executive privilege.
"We knew what the verdict was going to be. That is why this is going to the appeals court," Navarro said outside the Washington D.C. courthouse.
"I said from the beginning this is going to the Supreme Court. I said from the beginning I'm willing to go to prison to settle this issue, I'm willing to do that."
Navarro is due to be sentenced on January 12, 2024. He faces up to a year in prison for each charge.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more