Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro swiped back at federal prosecutors, alleging their accounts of his arrest last week were “false and misleading.”
In a court motion Friday requesting documents, Navarro stood by his claims that he was deprived of adequate legal counsel and rebuffed assertions from federal prosecutors Thursday that he was offered counsel.
FEDERAL PROSECUTORS ACCUSE PETER NAVARRO OF LYING ABOUT ARREST
“It is the prosecution’s claim that is both false and misleading,” the filing says. “As soon as the defendant asked to call for legal advice, the agents should have read from a written card the defendant his Miranda rights and done everything within their power to allow him a phone call to seek legal advice as he requested well prior to his court appearance.”
“They did not do so and thereby deprived the defendant of appropriate legal counsel,” continues the motion, which was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Prosecutors insisted in a Thursday filing that Navarro’s account of events contained numerous misrepresentations.
Navarro’s rebuttal came as he demanded relevant documents pertaining to his arrest, including video and audio recordings of the arrest, full transcriptions of relevant conversations, notes pertinent to a report by special agents, and signed affidavits from special agents involved in his arrest.
Minutes prior to his appearance before a magistrate last week, he was offered the chance to meet with a public defender and was concerned that “if he refused to agree to a public defender, he might not be released in a timely manner,” per the motion.
“While the public defender was a fine person, she had little command of the facts in the case as would be expected. This put the defendant at a far greater disadvantage during the hearing than if he had been able to speak to legal counsel, and it is an open question as to whether that was the prosecution’s intent,” the motion continued.
Navarro is facing contempt of Congress charges for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He was arrested last week at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and charged in the case. In his motion Friday, he also reiterated claims that his request for water was denied and that “there was no food available” — assertions prosecutors expressly denied in a filing Thursday objecting to Navarro’s request for a 45-day extension to his arraignment.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The former Trump adviser claimed that he had been placed in leg irons during his arrest and chastised the release of the FBI affidavit of the arrest, which he argued gave “false and misleading impressions” that were “seized upon by a left-wing media.” He also recalled that after his arrest, a former high-ranking FBI agent reached out to him and decried the conditions of his arrest as another example of “the FBI once again [allowing] themselves to be used as a political pawn by the DOJ.”
“If the defendant had simply been allowed to voluntarily surrender, he would have been able to have access to the legal advice he sought at the time of his arrest and this issue would be moot,” the motion contended. “Instead, he became yet another object of the kind of intimidation and humiliation the FBI has gotten into the practice of inflicting on Trump allies.”
