(NewsNation) — From federal prison to the Republican National Convention stage, Trump-era official Peter Navarro has spent the nine days since his release spreading rhetoric about a “weaponized Justice Department” he claims landed him behind bars.
The former director for the short-lived White House National Trade Council, Navarro was one of the leading voices in former President Donald Trump’s resistance to cede the White House after his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
Navarro was released July 17 from his four-month stay in federal prison for failing to respond to a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 Committee.
Jan. 6 Justice Department ‘weaponization’
Host Dan Abrams asked Navarro for clarification, as fellow conspirators Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino were not sentenced for their involvement. The difference, Abrams pointed out, is how they handled the subpoenas.
“Why not just take out Mark Meadows? Their explanation would be that you and Steve Bannon, in particular, completely flaunted the subpoena,” Abrams said.
“Steve’s case and mine are dramatically different. He had an advice of counsel defense, he was in the White House,” Navarro countered. “… [But] Mark, Dan, I don’t know. We tried to discovery on that, to figure that out when we argued selective prosecution.”
Abrams also referenced a slew of Democrats who were recently raided by the FBI, including New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and aide to former New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Navarro refused to acknowledge those as similar situations.
“You’re conflating all of those cases of real crime with what I did,” he said.
“So, all the Democrats committed real crimes, but the Republicans all — it was weaponization?” Abrams responded.
Navarro doubled down, saying that all the implicated Democrats are “corrupt politicians,” while he was simply “protecting and defending the Constitution.”
“You’re comparing me to frigging Menendez,” he added. “I mean, that guy’s like a sociopath and a criminal.”
Ann Coulter: Navarro is ‘profoundly stupid’
Navarro also mentioned former President Donald Trump’s history of releasing inmates through the First Step Back program, a prison reform policy he says the Biden-Harris administration is not enforcing.
“[Prisoners] don’t like Biden or Kamala Harris at all. Harris in particular, among African American males in there, many of them … in for drug offenses,” Navarro said. “They found her behavior as a prosecutor back in California, in particular with respect to marijuana, to be offensive.”
“So I was welcomed warmly, because of Trump, but also because it’s kind of funny in a way, because I refused to testify before Congress defending the Constitution. They knew I was like a stand-up guy,” he added.
Conservative pundit Ann Coulter shot back at his statements on crime, despite her initial plan to defend the former official on air.
“I was fully prepared to defend him and make a much better argument than he just made,” Coulter told Abrams. “But now I wish they had kept him in prison for four years instead of four months.”
Crime, she said, has been an election-winning issue for the Republican Party for more than half a century. And pointing out Trump’s perceived softness on the issue is an example of “why Republicans lose,” adding “I had no idea how profoundly stupid [Navarro] is.”
Project 2025
Despite being a contributor to Project 2025, a political handbook written by conservative think tank the Heritage Project and deemed dangerous by Democrats, Navarro said he wants nothing to do with the guide.
He claims he was invited to write a chapter on trade because of his White House position but found out, near publication, that someone else was writing a counterpoint in that same chapter.
“I said, I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is supposed to be Trump stuff. You’re throwing in that globalist [rhetoric]?” Navarro said.
“So they are discredited. In my view, they did a bait and switch on me,” he added. “They’re not going anywhere near the White House if Donald Trump wins this because those people are not our people.”
