Donald Trump was “really, really upset” when he learned that his former White House adviser Peter Navarro had been convicted of contempt of Congress, according to the ex-president’s close ally Rudy Giuliani.
“This one really got to me,” Giuliani – the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney – said Friday on the far-right media outlet Newsmax. “I was with former president Trump when we found out about it [on Thursday], and I’ve got to tell you, he was really, really upset about it.”
Giuliani told the Newsmax host Eric Bolling that pending criminal charges against him and Trump were “one thing” – but it was different to see “your family, your friends, the people working for you” to get in similar trouble.
“I mean, this is absurd,” Giuliani said.
Navarro served as a senior trade adviser during Trump’s presidency. Congress subpoenaed him in February 2022 to face questioning about why Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, temporarily delaying certification of Joe Biden’s victory during the previous year’s presidential election.
A House committee investigating the attack suspected Navarro had more information about any connection between claims of voter fraud that Trump allies had pushed and the assault on the Capitol. But Navarro did not surrender any emails, reports or notes, and he refused to testify.
On Thursday, he was found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress, both punishable by up to a year behind bars. Navarro’s sentencing has tentatively been scheduled for 12 January.
Giuliani alluded in passing to “executive privilege” on Friday when discussing Navarro’s conviction on Newsmax, which is generally a friendly environment for Trump and his allies.
Among other remarks, he also acknowledged that Navarro’s conviction had him worried as he grappled with charges filed against him by Georgia prosecutors who accuse him of trying to help Trump illegally overturn Biden’s electoral victory in that state in 2020.
“Am I concerned? Of course I am,” Giuliani said to Bolling when asked about the criminal case being pursued by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.
Giuliani and Trump have pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them by Willis. The pair were among 19 people named in a sprawling, 41-count indictment accusing them of conspiring to thwart the will of Georgia’s voters who had selected the Democratic victor Biden over his Republican rival Trump.
At his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump on Thursday night hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser meant to help Giuliani pay his legal bills, the Associated Press reported.
Willis’s case against Giuliani, Trump and their co-defendants isn’t the only reason the ex-New York City mayor’s legal bills are piling up. A federal judge held him liable in August in a lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud.
Giuliani could ultimately be compelled to pay significant damages to the election workers, in addition to the tens of thousands in court and lawyers’ fees for which he’s already on the hook, according to the AP.
The charges in Georgia against Trump are contained in one of four criminal indictments filed against him this year. The others charge him for his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels and other efforts to forcibly nullify his defeat to Biden.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and maintains significant leads in national and key state polling of candidates seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
