SOURCE:
"Peter Navarro is the picture of a law-abiding American citizen. He's a 72-year-old retired business school professor. He's got a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. His most recent job was extremely white collar. He served as the White House trade adviser in the last presidential administration, famous for his tough stance on China.
He's never been charged with a crime. He's never trafficked fentanyl, for example, from Mexico. In fact, his hobby is yoga and riding his bicycle.
In short, Peter Navarro does not seem like a criminal, much less a danger to this nation. And yet last Friday, federal agents arrested Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport in Washington. They did not call his lawyer, as is customary in cases like this. They didn't even come to his house, which, as it happens, is just feet from the FBI building, and they could have walked, but they didn't.
Instead, they took down Peter Navarro in public, as you would a fugitive terror mastermind so everyone could see it and learn the lesson they were sending. They handcuffed Peter Navarro. They put him in leg irons, and then they threw him in a cell. He's now facing years in prison.
So, what did Peter Navarro do to deserve treatment like this? Well, he resisted a subpoena from the January 6 committee. The January 6 committee is Washington's latest partisan inquisition. It's run by Nancy Pelosi with help from obedient little quislings like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Navarro resisted that subpoena because he had nothing to do with January 6, nothing whatsoever. That's not disputed. Peter Navarro did not break into the Capitol. He didn't encourage anyone else to break into the Capitol. He wasn't even there that day. He had no idea it was going to happen. Again, that's beyond dispute and Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney know that.
DOJ INDICTS FORMER TRUMP ADVISER PETER NAVARRO FOR CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS
If you really wanted to figure out what happened on January 6, Peter Navarro would be the last person you would talk to. Instead, you'd be talking to Ray Epps and various FBI informants. But finding out what happened on January 6 and why is not the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is preventing Donald Trump from running for president again.
So, in the service of that goal, Pelosi and Liz Cheney demanded that Peter Navarro surrender records of his private conversations with his former boss, President Donald Trump, and when he refused to do that, Congress voted to hold him in contempt in a partisan vote and then Merrick Garland's Justice Department filed criminal charges against Peter Navarro.
This is not the way civilized countries operate. Just because you control the White House and both houses of Congress, does not mean you get to throw your political opponents behind bars.
That's not what we do in America. That's what they do in Haiti, but that's what we're doing now and Peter Navarro was not the first. Biden's Justice Department also arrested former Trump adviser Steve Bannon for a similar fake crime. Steve Bannon is awaiting trial this summer.
So, this is not something we've seen before. It's a huge step toward the politics of the Third World, but the media whose job you thought of was to push back against power are not. They are, in fact, applauding because it turns out no punishment is too severe for those who disagree with the national news media. Watch them gloat.
MSNBC'S JONATHAN CAPEHART: What happened to Peter Navarro is what should have happened to Peter Navarro. He was indicted and when you're indicted, you're arrested.
CNN'S ERROL LOUIS: What Peter Navarro did was so far out of bounds and so indefensible.
MSNBC PAUL BUTLER: This prosecution is really about punishing Navarro based on his blatant disrespect for the congressional subpoena.
So, they really are your enemies. They're not covering the news. They're plotting ways to hurt you. That's true. "Congressional subpoenas are not optional," they lecture you, "Comply with them or go to jail."
That's the message the lawyers on television are sending. So, let's pretend for a moment that that was true, though it's in fact, not true. If there was, in fact, a law like that for that law to be legitimate, it would have to be like all laws applied equally across the board and no less than the attorney general himself has said that again and again and again.
"I came to work here," he said, "because we're committed to the rule of law and to seeking equal justice under the law." That was Merrick Garland in January. "We conduct every investigation guided by the same norms."
Now, those are the norms under which this country has
lived for 250 years. It's not justice unless it's applied equally to all
adult American citizens, period. Anything less than that is, by
definition, not justice, but we're getting much less than that and it's
very obvious. ... "
