March 15 (UPI) — Former Trump administration adviser Peter Navarro filed a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court Friday, just days before his scheduled prison sentence.
Navarro is supposed to report to federal prison in Miami Tuesday to begin serving a four-month sentence for defying a House Jan. 6 select committee subpoena.
In the emergency application to the Supreme Court obtained by ABC News, attorney Stanley Woodward argued Navarro “is indisputably neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety should he be released pending appeal.”
“For the first time in our nation’s history, a senior presidential adviser has been convicted of contempt of Congress after asserting executive privilege over a congressional subpoena,” Woodward’s filing said. “Dr. Navarro has appealed and will raise a number of issues on appeal that he contends are likely to result in the reversal of his conviction, or a new trial.”
Navarro was convicted in September on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide testimony and documents to the committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
He had asked two lower courts to allow him to remain free while he appeals his conviction, but U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta — who presided over Navarro’s trial — and a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday rejected his request.
He has unsuccessfully argued that Donald Trump asserted executive privilege making him exempt from the committee’s subpoena, but Mehta and the appeals court said they found “no evidence” Trump did so.
His appeal to overturn the conviction is pending.