Peter Navarro makes long-shot Supreme Court plea to avoid more prison time

By John Fritze and Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — Former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro asked the Supreme Court to take another look at his request to avoid prison, filing a long-shot request on Tuesday that the high court rarely grants.

In an emergency request last month, Navarro asked the Supreme Court to let him remain free while he challenged his contempt of Congress conviction before the federal appeals court in Washington, DC. Chief Justice John Roberts denied that request March 18, and Navarro reported to prison the following day.

He has served 15 days of his four-month sentence.

Supreme Court rules allow parties whose emergency applications are denied by a single justice to resubmit that request to another justice. In a brief letter Tuesday, Navarro’s attorneys asked Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first nominee to the court, to review his request.

Such requests are rarely granted.

Navarro’s attorneys had argued that pausing a lower court’s ruling rejecting a bid to avoid prison is warranted when the person making the request is not a flight risk and is raising substantial legal questions. Navarro said his case would “raise a number of issues on appeal that he contends are likely to result in the reversal of his conviction, or a new trial.”

Two lower courts turned down similar appeals.

Roberts then rejected the request with a brief opinion last month. The chief justice said that the federal appeals courts concluded Navarro had forfeited any challenge to the idea that, even if he was entitled to executive privilege, he could avoid appearing before Congress.

Roberts said he saw “no basis to disagree with the determination that Navarro forfeited those arguments.”

Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison after a jury found him guilty of failing to respond to congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony in the House’s investigation of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.

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