MILWAUKEE — Former Trump aide Peter Navarro — fresh out of a four-month term in federal prison for defying a subpoena to testify to the House Jan. 6 Committee — addressed the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, just hours after his release.
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The RNC delegates greeted Navarro with a standing ovation lasting more than a minute. Making light of his time in the joint, Navarro said in jest: “You folks just want to know if you can see the MAGA tattoo that I got in there.” Navarro regaled the audience with the tale of how “Joe Biden and his department of injustice put me there” because the Jan. 6 committee had demanded he “betray Donald John Trump to save my own skin. I refused.” Navarro warned the crowd: “If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you.”
The crowd lustily applauded this convicted criminal when he insisted of his supposed persecution: “They did not break me. And they will never break Donald Trump.” Trump has privately promised to reward for Navarro for holding his tongue and not becoming yet another Trump sycophant-turned-“fucking rat.” (That is a preferred, profane term that former President Trump has often used — especially when privately mocking his ex-fixer Michael Cohen — to ridicule those who’ve turned on him or flipped under pressure from law enforcement.)
For days, various sources close to Trump and other Republicans working at the convention reveled in the unveiling of Navarro at the downtown Milwaukee arena, eagerly awaiting and planning it out as a theatrical owning-of-the-libs kind of moment. One Republican close to Trump gleefully messaged Rolling Stone from the arena as Navarro was mid-speech, sending a short video of the former Trump White House official and just one word: “Gangsta.” In the past, Trump so appreciated Navarro’s counsel and his cult-like devotion that Trump bestowed upon him the affectionate nickname of: “My Peter.”
The Republican Party has long touted itself as the party of “law and order,” and did so repeatedly during Tuesday night’s programming. But the unprecedented and inescapable outcome of nominating a man convicted of dozens of felony counts is that the GOP convention has become a defiant celebration of criminality and lawless conduct — a festival where obedience to the law is far less important than loyalty to Trump.
Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records in part of a scheme to hide a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Daniels has claimed she had an extramarital affair with Trump — the politically damaging news of which threatened to spill into public view in advance of the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton.
The party line at the convention is that Trump — rather than being a perpetrator of crime — is in fact the victim of “lawfare” maliciously wielded by his Democratic enemies. (Navarro coined the phrase “lawfare jackals,” to describe those who put him in prison.)
Despite the recent gift by a Trump-appointed judge dismissing the felony charges for stockpiling classified documents at his Florida club, Mar a Lago, Trump remains in significant legal jeopardy in the election tampering cases — both on the federal level and in Georgia. For Trump, personally, the biggest upshot of regaining the White House could be the ability to instruct his Justice Department to intervene to drop the federal charges against him. Trump has also pledged to use his pardon power liberally to free the insurgents who stormed the U.S. Capitol on his behalf on Jan. 6.
Remarkably — or, inevitably — official merchandise for sale inside Fiserv Forum, where the convention is staged, celebrates the trappings of Trump’s criminal record. T-Shirts and beer koozies are for sale featuring Trump’s mugshot and the slogan “Never Surrender!” Another vendor at the outdoors ConventionFest was doing brisk business selling a shirt reading “I’m Voting for the Convicted Felon,” and another with the number 47 made up of a cross hatch of the words “CONVICTED” and “FELON.”
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When asked if she saw any irony in selling this kind of merch when Trump’s convention had just staged their law-enforcement-adulating “Make America Safe Once Again”-themed festivities in the arena the night prior, third outdoor vendor simply snapped at Rolling Stone : “It doesn’t count if the crimes are bullshit!”
With its recent decision on presidential immunity, the Supreme Court has now endowed the presidency king-like powers — such that as long as presidential conduct can be deemed an “official act,” it is beyond the reach of criminal law that would apply to any other citizen. Trump — the only party nominee with a rap sheet — is poised to be immune from prosecution for any future crimes he might commit, or instruct others to commit on his behalf.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Navarro authored several dossiers claiming to prove nonexistent fraud in the election. With Steve Bannon, he also helped formulate a plot known as the Green Bay Sweep, seeking to block certification of the Electoral College. Navarro discussed his post election role in an interview with Rolling Stone — but was subsequently convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify under oath.
Navarro is not the only high profile RNC conventioneer with significant legal challenges or a flippant view of the laws he chooses not to follow.
Longtime Trump lawyer and confidant Rudy Giuliani faces felony charges in Arizona for his alleged role in attempting to subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential contest with a “fake electors” scheme. Three fellow defendants from this fake elector case received permission from a judge to attend the convention; they are RNC delegates. Giuliani, who made a tumbling entrance at the convention earlier this week, also lost a massive $148 million judgment for defaming a pair of election workers in Georgia.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz also earned a speaking slot Wednesday. Gaetz was investigated — but will not be facing criminal charges — for his alleged connection to a sex trafficking crime involving a teenager, for which an associate has been convicted. Gaetz remains under a House ethics investigation that is looking into a laundry list of potential misbehavior including whether he “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
Regardless, Gaetz used his convention speech to take a jab at playing himself up as a clean politician who doesn’t accept lobbyist money, and said he looks forward to joining Donald Trump and vowed “the swamp draining will recommence soon.”
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