A whiny Peter Navarro complains to a judge that his arrest by the FBI hurt his feelings
Peter Navarro, architect of the “Green Bay Sweep” scheme to overturn the 2020 election, chose to ignore a subpoena to testify before the House Committee investigating the attempted J6 coup. A federal grand jury indicted him on contempt of Congress charges. Today, he was arrested and handcuffed by the FBI while boarding a plane. And they threw him in jail. He was unhappy because the FBI had not respected this “distinguished" public servant. He complained to the Judge in U.S. District Court for DC.
“I actually live right next to FBI. Literally right next to FBI. What did they do? Let me get all the way to the airport. Board the play. Come at me. Put me in handcuffs. Put me in a jail cell. I was more than willing to find modus vivendi.”
Adding, “Who ARE these people? This is not America. I was a distinguished civil servant for 4 years. NO ONE questioned my ethics. And they are treating me in this fashion”
Poor baby. However, Navarro chose not to mention that last week, when the FBI had served him with a subpoena at his house, he bitched and moaned that they had been too “loud”. This arrogant little man thinks the law does not apply to him. And that his previous job should shield him from the consequences of his actions.
Equally laughable is his suggestion that he was a “distinguished” public servant for four years. While a Judge might consider who you are and your contributions to society as part of sentencing, those considerations are irrelevant to whether and how the FBI arrests you.
As for “distinguished”, I challenge Navarro to find a person in the street who can identify a single thing he did besides pissing off his workmates. I would be surprised if many people even knew his job title or responsibilities.
We should not be surprised at Navarro’s whining. He is not a well-regarded man — either for his ability or temperament. As a report in Mother Jones puts it
“Dubbed “Trump’s looniest economic adviser” by the Wall Street-focused Dealbreaker, Navarro is an academic who famously made up a fake expert to quote in his books. A five-time failed political candidate in San Diego, Navarro is widely known there “as a nut,” says one veteran California GOP political consultant. Navarro’s views on trade are considered so fringy that, for years, reporters covering him have been trying unsuccessfully to find a credible source who may agree with him.”
However, while others think he is a loon, Navarro is a legend in his own mind. He publicly butted heads with Dr. Fauci over the administration’s COVID policy. He wrote — without authorization, and after he was told not to — an op-ed in USA Today attacking Fauci, writing,
“He has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on”.
When John Berman later asked him on CNN why people should listen to him rather than a highly-trained and immensely experienced expert in epidemiology, Navarro was smug.
“My qualifications, in terms of looking at the science, is that I’m a social scientist. I have a Ph.D. And I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it’s in medicine, the law, economics, or whatever.”
People who claim to be experts in everything are never experts in anything. (You can use Navarro’s ex-boss as another example.)
Most people who know Navarro despise him. In an article by the Washington Post — based on the observations of 28 Trump administration staffers — Navarro is ripped for being a bad-tempered, incompetent asshole. His performance was so bad that in 2018 John Kelly, then chief of staff, ordered an investigation of his workplace conduct. Kelly told Navarro,
“If it’s worse than what I’m hearing, you’re gone. “If it’s as bad as what I’m hearing, I don’t know. You may be gone.”
Ultimately, all Navarro received from the administration was an informal reprimand.
Navarro is a bully who routinely exploded at his assistants while scheming to undermine other senior White House officials. Young women were a favorite target of his verbal abuse. Many called him habitually disrespectful. And he would assign professional women to act as note-takers during policy meetings rather than allowing them to participate.
Unsurprisingly, from someone with such an inflated opinion of his worth, he sucked at his job. His poor performance led the White House to freeze him out of the administration's negotiations with the Chinese, despite his supposed expertise in trade policy. Nonetheless, because Trump approved his aggressive monomania, he was named to head up the White House effort to increase pandemic supplies
His performance was so dismal the SEC investigated his award of a $765 million federal loan to fund the launch of a new pharmaceutical division at Kodak - a company with no pharmaceutical experience.
And the Democrats on a House Oversight and Reform subcommittee concluded that Navarro was responsible for wasting more than $500 million by overpaying for ventilators manufactured by Philips. Navarro agreed to pay almost five times more per unit than the Obama administration had, accepting the manufacturer’s opening bid without bargaining.
A congressional investigator said of Navarro's posturing versus performance,
“There’s this public bravado. But in private they roll over and just get pushed around by these companies
And that is the way it always is with bullies. They will whine to judges and pick on people who cannot defend themselves. They think they walk on water when they cannot even swim.