Executive Privilege for a Dem, but Not for Them

TRUMP ADVISOR PETER NAVARRO was convicted on Thursday by a D.C. jury in Federal District Court, after four hours of deliberations, for failing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6th committee to testify and produce documents. Each of the misdemeanor counts carry up to a year in prison and a possible $100,000 fine. Navarro served as director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and briefly as the director of the National Trade Council.

When Navarro refused to testify, based on executive privilege his boss had invoked, he was held in contempt of Congress and the matter was referred to dirty cop, Merrick Garland, at the Department of Justice in June of 2022. This was shortly after another Trump advisor, Steve Bannon, was similarly charged, and later convicted in July of 2022. (Bannon has since appealed his conviction and has managed to stay out of jail and continue to produce his M-S video podcast on Rumble, War Room,” which covers all things MAGA, along with occasional diatribes on trans-humanism.) Never mind Dem A.G. Eric Holder, accused of the same thing, was never convicted…by his fellow Dems.

Navarro’s defense to the contempt charges was he had been personally directed by 45th President Donald Trump to not cooperate with the Committee due to executive privilege, a established principle of law that the executive branch cannot legally be forced to disclose their confidential communications when it would adversely affect the operations or procedures of the executive branch. Judge Amit P. Mehta, however, refused to allow Navarro to make that argument in court. 

For one thing, the judge wasn’t convinced Trump had invoked the privilege, but he was also clearly (and I believe incorrectly) construing Navarro’s failure to appear as a strict liability crime. He may be legally right, but technically wrong: after all, fundamental due process demands a defendant be allowed to assert the best defense he has. It may be a lousy one, but he should be able to raise it nonetheless. 

As for Trump’s invocation of privilege, that is a matter of fact for the jury, not the judge, to decide (not that a D.C. jury is likely to be at all unbiased, but I digress…). The judge seemed to want Trump to testify as to his privilege and his request that Navarro honor it, but to do so could theoretically put Trump in legal jeopardy too, while his testifying about it would, in and of itself, breach the very privilege sought to be protected. There is a circularity in logic there that is hard to legally reconcile. 

Adam Schiff, Still a Failed Screenwriter

WE KNEW THE PROPAGANDA was coming. Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi’s so-called “Select” Committee produced “testimony” that was aired “live” on just about every television station in America, save Fox News, which decided to simply cut in as needed for any breaking news. Its prime time line up is such that the cable news channel really worried it would loose audience if it broke its schedule.

The J6 Committee, as it’s been called, has only two RINO-Republicans to add to its bipartisan imprimatur: Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both appointed by Pelosi. Huh? Yes, Pelosi nominated them after an extraordinary stunt she pulled last July, when the committee was being formed. Ordinarily, the Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), would be permitted to nominate five members here, but Pelosi vetoed two of them. The unprecedented move pushed McCarthy to refuse to nominate anyone, leaving Pelosi to pick the RINOs. The rest, as they say, is history and the narrative for the history books was ghost-written well in advance.

Enter Adam Schiff, or “Shifty-Schiff” as he is known. Schiff aspired to be a screenwriter at one point, and apparently wrote a crime script that was never produced. If he couldn’t get a movie made in Hollywood, by God, he was going to get one made in D.C., so when the opportunity arose to get his alleged documentary on prime time television nationwide, he wanted to make it entertaining. To hell with pesky facts, the plot just had to keep moving. It became Thursday night’s re-make of “The Manchurian Candidate,” but with a Ukrainian “B” Story. Or something like that.

Without bothering to relay the propaganda here, suffice it to say, the idea was/is to come up with an inditement of 45th President Donald Trump so that he can be prevented from ever running for public office again, because it isn’t enough to have stolen a presidential victory from him. This is how down and dirty the Dems will go to win. They want to hurt fellow MAGA Americans who voted Trump to the extent possible, too.

Even one of their own, Harvard law professor emeritus, Alan Dershowitz, who is a honest broker, concluded the televised “hearing” was a sham and that President Trump committed no crime on that fateful day. Dershowitz said of the “trial”:

“It was unethical. Why was it unethical? Take for example President Trump’s speech on January 6th. I opposed that speech. I don’t think it was done well. I don’t think he should have done it. But he said at the end of the speech he wanted people to show their voices patriotically and peacefully. They doctored the tape! They edited those words out. If a prosecutor ever did that they’d be disbarred! You can’t present part of the tape and deliberately omit the rest of the tape in order to mislead the audience. Especially when the other side has no opportunity to cross-examine. And has no opportunity to put on its own evidence. There is a special obligation not to cheat! Not to defraud the viewers. That’s exactly what they did… And Donald Trump committed no crimes.”

Dershowitz is correct. In fact, I’d take it a step further. The ‘prosecutors’ would be obligated to turn over exculpatory evidence to the ‘defense,’ which wasn’t done here. To be sure, the ‘defense’ already had it, so it didn’t have to be turned over, but neither could it be used in a flagrantly misleading way even if the ‘defense’ was on notice it might be: he couldn’t object. True, a congressional committee isn’t a prosecutorial body, but it can make criminal referrals, and clearly intends to try to do so here, so the distinction isn’t that important when it comes to the end result.

Dershowitz’s point that the ‘defense’ has been given no opportunity to cross-examine his accusers is a critical one. It effectively becomes a prohibited ex parte proceeding, which is inherently unfair. And the ‘defendant’ has effectively been gagged since the alleged ‘crime,’ having been banned by nearly all MSM and social media platforms, which act more like propaganda arms of the Democrat party than as legitimate news or commentary sources. It is worth noting that the ‘defendant’ not only couldn’t cross-examine his accusers, the accusers would likely claim legislative immunity if they were ever called to testify.

Dershowitz also told Just the News that “no rational person will believe” the committee’s eventual report because it is so one-sided, conclusory, and devoid of due process. More likely, a reasonable person will see it as an opportunistic scam that simultaneously covers up for Pelosi’s failure to heed appropriate caution for Jan. 6th, based on an internal Capitol Police report, which can be viewed in full here. Still, the televised propaganda surprisingly garnered an audience of almost 20 million (but, by contrast, Trump’s first SOTU received an audience of 45 million.) There are supposed to be six more of these dog and pony shows in the kangaroo court in the capital.

We’ll see if ticket sales to the greatest hoax in history justify it.