NEW YORK (AP) — Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who is in jail on contempt of Congress charges, is expected to speak at next week's Republican National Convention just hours after his release.

That's according to two people familiar with the event's schedule who spoke on condition of anonymity to share details before they were formally announced.


What You Need To Know

  • Former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was found guilty in September of contempt of Congress and is serving a four-month sentence

  • Two people familiar with the Republican National Convention schedule say Navarro will speak at the event shortly after his release, which is set for Wednesday

  • Navarro has promoted unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol

Navarro is set to be released from a Miami prison on Wednesday, July 17, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online database of current inmates. That would give him enough time to board a plane and make it to Milwaukee before the convention ends Thursday. He was found guilty in September of contempt of Congress charges for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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.

Navarro, who was a Trump White House trade adviser, promoted baseless claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the committee investigating the attack.

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.

Navarro was the second Trump aide convicted of contempt of Congress charges. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon 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 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 Washington, D.C., and in Georgia, but both cases are on hold.