STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Peter Navarro is a longtime adviser to President Trump. He is an architect of Trump's approach to trade and also a former prison inmate. He spent four months in jail last year for refusing to testify before a House investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Navarro has written a book about his experience called "I Went To Prison So You Won't Have To." Welcome to NPR, Mr. Navarro. It's good to talk with you again.
PETER NAVARRO: You can call me Peter. I know you, Steve. We go back a long ways, brother.
INSKEEP: Navarro was in our studios Monday morning, just hours after he had returned on a late-night flight from a memorial service for the murdered activist Charlie Kirk.
NAVARRO: I just miss the guy dearly. He was very important to me. And he's just so human.
INSKEEP: Navarro was still wearing his black suit. And he reflected on Kirk's political importance.
NAVARRO: The comparison I give is Ralph Reed and David Axelrod are the two kind of gold standard political organizers.
INSKEEP: Interesting. Republican organizer of the '90s and political strategist for President Obama.
NAVARRO: Exactly. And what Reed did was take the Christians in the churches and get them to the ballot box. What Axelrod did in a similar way, using these micro targeting and very sophisticated messaging, he got Blacks, Hispanics and the youth to come in '08 and elect the first African American president. Astonishing achievement. But what Charlie did was actually a significantly higher degree of difficulty because not only did he have to mobilize the youth to vote for Trump, before he could do that, he had to persuade them. And that was a heavy lift.
INSKEEP: Navarro had come by for a previously scheduled interview on his book, which offers a day-by-day account of his four months in a minimum-security prison in Miami last year. In our talk, he described meeting other inmates.
NAVARRO: And one of the guys says, sure, we like you. And I go, why do you like me? And they go, well, you're not a snitch.
INSKEEP: Navarro contends his case is not about snitching but the Constitution. When subpoenaed by Congress over the January 6 attack, he said he was forbidden because of President Trump's executive privilege, an argument the court rejected.
NAVARRO: And I proceeded to spend an hour explaining how on five different occasions, I had had communications directly with President Trump indicating that he had invoked executive privilege. And I was supposed to not speak and honor that subpoena. It was clear.
INSKEEP: What the judge said - and there was a question about...
NAVARRO: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Whether Trump even could invoke executive privilege because he wasn't president anymore. But let's set that aside. The judge said there were a couple of other officials, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino...
NAVARRO: Yes.
INSKEEP: ...Who presented letters from President Trump in which President Trump claimed executive privilege so that it could be argued about. He said you did not present such a letter. Why didn't Trump give you one?
NAVARRO: That's true.
INSKEEP: Why didn't Trump give you one?
NAVARRO: Well, here's the point. That's not the point. The point is that first of all, the privilege is presumptive. It was presumed.
INSKEEP: Though Navarro has finished his prison term, he has continued an appeal. After Trump won the 2024 election, the Justice Department withdrew its support of the case against him, and that is one of many course changes at the Justice Department this year.
Let me ask about another aspect of this that you feel strongly about, I know.
NAVARRO: Sure.
INSKEEP: You feel that political prosecutions are wrong. You feel that you were the subject of a political prosecution.
NAVARRO: I think we would both agree that political prosecutions are wrong.
INSKEEP: What have you thought about...
NAVARRO: The question is whether you believe mine was.
INSKEEP: What have you thought about in recent days as the president has ever more publicly pushed the Justice Department to prosecute people that he feels targeted him, even going to the extent of replacing a U.S. attorney who found no evidence against Letitia James of New York?
NAVARRO: This is a wake-up call that the justice system is being weaponized against people. And this is your punch line here. If you don't hold the people accountable who weaponize that Justice Department, they'll do it again and again and again.
INSKEEP: But my question is about what's happening now.
NAVARRO: Sure.
INSKEEP: This is a very interesting case. Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, prosecuted Trump. Trump now wants her investigated, not for that prosecution, but for something to do with real estate ownership. And his own appointed U.S. attorney seems to have looked into that, found no evidence sufficient to prosecute, and therefore, the president has replaced the U.S. attorney and wants to send in someone else who will prosecute. Doesn't that sound political to you?
NAVARRO: Let me answer you this way, OK, because Letitia James is a sideshow. She's a footnote to all of the other things that were done to stop Trump from getting elected or to get him out of office. And I don't know about Letitia James. But I do know, and I've said publicly that I think James Comey, FBI director, Clapper and Brennan, Page, Strzok, all these FBI people, I think Schiff lied to Congress. And he needs to be investigated. And there's a whole list of people. So these people...
INSKEEP: But this is my question, if I can. This is my question.
NAVARRO: OK.
INSKEEP: Should the government try to find anything they possibly can against these people?
NAVARRO: That's not...
INSKEEP: See if there's a real estate document. That's what they're literally doing.
NAVARRO: Well, it's what you say that they're doing.
INSKEEP: No, no. It's what they've openly done.
NAVARRO: What did they do to Trump? You want to know what our mindset is. That's what you want to know.
INSKEEP: Sure.
NAVARRO: So let me tell folks in NPR just a simple Newtonian principle.
INSKEEP: Action, reaction.
NAVARRO: That's why I'm here. "I Went To Prison So You Won't Have To," it's a tale about accountability.
INSKEEP: But I think your point is...
NAVARRO: My point is that here's the thing...
INSKEEP: ...Something must be done, however it must be done? That's what you feel?
NAVARRO: No, no. Not however it must done.
INSKEEP: OK.
NAVARRO: Do between the lines. But for example, like, Lisa Cook at the Fed. It's like, obviously Donald Trump doesn't want her in there because he views her policies are incompetent. But two things can be true. It's also true that it appears now on three different occasions she filled out fraudulent paperwork.
INSKEEP: The administration accused the Federal Reserve governor of claiming multiple primary residences. Lisa Cook denies wrongdoing. Some records say she described one as a vacation home. And courts have so far blocked Trump's bid to fire her as he seeks control of the Fed. Peter Navarro warns the administration is short of time.
NAVARRO: And that's the problem here, because if the Democrats regain the House in...
INSKEEP: 2026.
NAVARRO: ...2026, can you guarantee me right now that they won't subpoena me and everybody else in the White House and the same crap again?
INSKEEP: I make no predictions about the future.
NAVARRO: I'll make the prediction. Of course they will, because they think they can do whatever they want until they're held accountable.
INSKEEP: Peter Navarro, it's a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much.
NAVARRO: Thank you, Steve. Good to see you.
INSKEEP: His book is called "I Went To Prison So You Won't Have To." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
