Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro said that then-Vice President Mike Pence had originally wanted to help President Donald Trump in contesting the results of the 2020 election.
In an interview on Newsmax TV, Navarro said that he had been told Pence wanted to talk to him, but then when he called “I get on the line and it’s crickets. And what happened, I think, was that his Koch Brother chief of staff, Marc Short, intercepted the call [and] backed Pence off.”
Navarro said Pence's actions after backing off that pledge may be treasonous:
“The reason why I think Pence is guilty of treason, to at least President Trump and perhaps to this country, is that he acted on the basis of a flawed legal opinion concocted by his own general counsel that he did not share with either the president or with the president’s White House legal counsel. Due process plus duty to the commander in chief required you to do that,” Navarro said.
“He had a duty to the commander-in-chief to share with President Trump and the White House legal counsel the flawed legal opinion Pence was acting upon,” Navarro added. “That’s how process worked in the White House. He did not do that. Effectively, he hid that from the president and then went on his merry way and stuck a knife in the back of President Trump.”
In March, Navarro compared Pence’s role in ending Trump’s presidency to the role of Brutus in the murder of Julius Caesar:
“It started flawlessly with [Sen.] Ted Cruz challenging the results in Arizona,” Navarro told Newsmax in the March interview. “It was a tragedy that Mike Pence decided to be a traitor to the American Caesar of Trump. I liken it in [my book] to a Shakespearean moment, the ‘Et tu, Brute?’ moment.”
He added: “But it was all designed, basically, to take out President Trump, who was anathema to money who backed people like Mike Pence.”
Meanwhile, former Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler met Tuesday with the House select committee investigating Jan. 6.
A former aide to Navarro, Ziegler reportedly could provide the panel with information on what CNN characterized as a "heated Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020."
During that 2020 meeting, according to CNN's report on Tuesday, White House lawyers "clashed with outside Trump allies Sidney Powell, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn" regarding their challenge to the 2020 presidential election results.
The New York Times previously reported that Ziegler had taken credit for admitting the group into the White House. Other Trump officials, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, have previously testified to the committee that they were surprised upon learning that Powell and Flynn were meeting with Trump in the Oval Office that day.
Trump said in a statement: "The Unselect Committee and the Fake News Media refuse to go anywhere near these two topics, especially the Rigged Election, where the evidence of fraud is incontestable!"
Critics of the Jan. 6 committee say the panel has also steered clear of addressing the fact that Trump had offered to send National Guard to D.C. but his offered was rebuffed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Peter Navarro: "It was a tragedy that Mike Pence decided to be a traitor to the American Caesar of Trump" pic.twitter.com/1xYO2yEGFY
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 30, 2022
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