MIAMI – Former White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, who was convicted of contempt of Congress charges in September, was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami on Wednesday, a source confirmed to Local 10 News.
Navarro, who served as Trump’s White House trade adviser, promoted baseless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election and was found guilty for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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Navarro is expected to speak on his sentencing at the Republican National Convention on Thursday at 6:36 p.m., according to ABC News.
His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Navarro’s prison consultant Sam Mangel told ABC News that during Navarro’s four-month prison sentence, he worked at the prison library and lived in the “elder dorm.”
Navarro did not have any issues with other inmates or staff and was “well respected” while serving his sentence,” Mangel said.
Mangel said Navarro got through his sentence with “surprising grace and fortitude” but is “happy it’s over,” ABC News confirmed.
“At 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. you have to stand by your bed and be counted,” said Mangel. “Everybody wears the same color clothes, eats the same food, and sleeps in the same bunk.”
“It’s a very degrading, humiliating experience for anyone,” Mangel added. “I’m quite sure he’s happy it’s over and he’s now able to move on with his life.”
The decision to include Navarro on the program suggests convention organizers may not shy away from those who have been charged with crimes related to the attack — and the lies that helped spur it — at the party's nominating event, which will draw millions of viewers across days of prime-time programming.
Before he reported to federal prison in March for a four-month sentence, Navarro called his conviction the “partisan weaponization of the judicial system.”
He has maintained that he couldn’t cooperate with the committee because the former president had invoked executive privilege. But the court rejected that argument, finding Navarro couldn’t prove Trump actually had.
“When I walk in that prison today, the justice system — such as it is — will have done a crippling blow to the constitutional separation of powers and executive privilege,” Navarro said the day he reported for his sentence.
Trump, meanwhile, has called Navarro “a good man” and “great patriot” who was “treated very unfairly.”
Navarro had asked to stay free while he appealed his conviction to give the courts time to consider his challenge. But Washington’s federal appeals court denied his bid to stave off his sentence, finding his appeal wasn’t likely to reverse his conviction.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts also refused to step in, saying in a written order that Navarro had “no basis to disagree” with the appeals court.
Navarro was the second Trump aide convicted of contempt of Congress charges. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon previously received a four-month sentence that he is serving now.
Trump himself was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records in his criminal hush money trial.
The Jan. 6 House committee spent 18 months investigating the events, interviewing over 1,000 witnesses, holding 10 hearings and obtaining more than 1 million pages of documents. In its final report, the panel ultimately concluded that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election results and failed to act to stop his supporters from storming the Capitol.
Trump has also been charged for his efforts to overturn the election in both Washington, D.C., and in Georgia, but both cases are currently on hold.