The former Trump advisor Peter Navarro speaks at GOP convention after his release from prison

The former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was a speaker at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday only minutes after being released from an Miami federal prison following the successful completion of a four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena issued by the committee of Congress on January 6.

By Tierney Sneed, Katelyn Polantz, Denise Royal

Jul 18, 2024 02:44 AM

CNN —

The former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro spoke at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday just hours after his release from the Miami federal prison after the complete sentence of four months for not complying with the subpoena issued by the January 6 Congress committee.

“I received a simple message to you. If they are able to come after me, they could be able to come after Donald Trump. Be careful. They’ll be after the person you are,” he warned convention attendees in Milwaukee in Wisconsin, in which his former boss was officially named his 2024 GOP president candidate.

Navarro has been one of the two members of Trump’s circle that were found guilty of not complying with subpoenas issued by the now defunct House select committee that looked into the 6 January 2021 incident in the US Capitol. Trump advisor Steve Bannon started serving his four-month prison sentence in the month of January at the federal prison located in Connecticut.

Navarro was in the 70s has worked as a law librarian at the time he was in a prison facility, prison counsellor Sam Mangel told CNN.

“Everybody has to work,” Mangel stated. “It gave him a chance to write.”

Mangel stated that Navarro was loved and admired by the other inmates at the prison.

“When I went to visit him, guys were coming up to him, high-fiving him,” Mangel stated.

Navarro concluded his speech on Wednesday evening at the Republican convention by inviting his wife to be on stage with him: “This is my beautiful girl. She was there together with me.”

“Now here’s the sweetest thing that’s going to come off my lips: Vote Trump-Vance ’24 for Trump 47,” Trump declared.

In defiance of the subpoena

When lawmakers asked Navarro to participate in the investigation into Trump’s electoral subversion scheme They cited reports that he was a part of attempts to derail Congress to approve the results of the 2020 presidential election, and also to his personal account in his memoir of the plots related to the election.

In just a few hours of deliberations A federal jury ruled Navarro guilty in the summer of last year for contempt of court on two counts in the case of his inability to provide documents and not attending an interview with the committee that they was requesting.

Prior to the trial Navarro tried to present before his jury that he was working under the instructions of Trump who had asserted executive privilege in refusing to obey the subpoena. However, the judge did not allow him to present this defense, after concluding that the previous White House aide had not provide sufficient evidence to prove to prove that Trump had in fact asserted the privilege.

While Navarro was unable to win an emergency appeal to stay his sentence in prison, he has now filed an appeal to overturn his conviction on the basis of merits.

The federal correctional institution where Navarro is a resident since March is among the most prestigious prison camps in the United States with less than 200 inmates within its old infrastructure, and with the majority of Puerto Rican population.

The headline and story have been revised.

CNN’s Aditi Sangal and Andrew Menezes contributed to this report.