Peter Navarro, former White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, told Breitbart News on Thursday that his recent arrest by the FBI is part of a broader political operation to prevent former President Donald Trump from running for the presidency in 2024.
Navarro was arrested on Friday after refusing to comply with a subpoena issued to him by the House select committee ostensibly investigating the events of January 6.
“This committee is really a kangaroo court,” Navarro said on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. “It’s set to hold primetime hearings tonight for the sole purpose of trying to build some kind of criminal case against Donald Trump to prevent him from running for president in 2024, an election he would certainly win based on the Biden regime’s performance.”
Navarro held that information sought by the aforementioned Democrat-run select committee is protected by executive privilege given his former role as a presidential advisor in the Trump administration.
He said President Joe Biden directed him to comply with the subpoena and testify before the select committee via letter.
“The committee came at me with their full force,” Navarro stated. “I’m in an untenable situation. I don’t have the power to waive the [executive] privilege. So, what did they do? This is the tragedy here in this country. … They colluded passively or explicitly with Joe Biden and the White House, who writes me a letter saying, ‘You don’t have immunity, and you’re not covered by privilege,’ meaning that Biden was effectively attempting to strip me of testimonial immunity and President Trump of his right to executive privilege.”
He added, “You can’t do that. If we get into a situation where an incumbent can come in and strip his predecessor willy-nilly of his executive privilege anytime he wants — under the false flag of some national security issue — then the privilege won’t exist.”
The “key legal point” regarding his refusal to comply with the subpoena is that executive privilege “is not my privilege to waive.” He continued, “I have a duty to abide by the privilege.”
Navarro described sales of his latest book Taking Back Trump’s America: Why We Lost the White House and How We’ll Win It Back as a “legal defense fund” for himself in the face of abusive and politicized lawfare.
“I’m looking at what people are telling me — and I’m just astonished by this — it’s going to be about half a million dollars or more — maybe a million in legal bills — to stay out of prison,” he remarked.
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