Former U.S. trade adviser and staunch Donald Trump supporter Peter Navarro revealed his knowledge this week of what appeared to be a significant plot to overthrow a legitimate presidential election.
In an appearance on former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast Thursday, Navarro praised Bannon as a “hero” for coming up with the “strategy to go up to Capitol Hill” on Jan. 6.
Bannon had told his “War Room” listeners on Jan. 5: “So many people said, ‘Man, if I was in a revolution, I would be in Washington.’ Well, this is your time in history …. we’re on the point of attack tomorrow … it’s game day.”
Navarro, using a football analogy about one team sacking another, gloated Thursday that there were “100 people working on the … team … who were going to make sure we remanded the [electoral] results back to the battleground states,” which would have subverted Americans’ choice for president.
Navarro also referred to former Vice President Mike Pence as the “quarterback” of the offense, suggesting they had wanted Pence to go along with the plot.
Recent details uncovered by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection appear to confirm Navarro’s characterization of the forces that had been building to undermine the vote.
Thousands of pages of emails and texts released by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows have revealed, among many other things, a PowerPoint “coup plot” that was cooked up by Trump allies in a “command center” at the Willard Hotel leading up to Jan. 6.
Under the plan, Trump was to declare a national emergency, baselessly citing foreign “control” of electronic voting systems.
Right-wing attorney John Eastman penned a pair of “coup memos” on how to overturn the election by challenging electoral votes — and met with Meadows and Trump in the Oval Office to discuss the strategy the day before the insurrection, The New York Times reported.
A top aide for the former vice president said Eastman pressured Pence to “betray his oath” of office and the Constitution in a bid to convince him to baselessly challenge the electoral votes.
Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa wrote in their book “Peril” that Bannon told Trump that Jan. 6 was the day to bring down the Biden presidency.
“We are going to kill it in the crib, kill the Biden presidency in the crib,” Bannon said, according to the book.
“If Republicans could cast enough of a shadow on Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, Bannon said, it would be hard for Biden to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him illegitimate. They would ignore him,” the book said.
Both Bannon and Navarro have been subpoenaed by the House select committee to testify. Trump urged Navarro in a statement to ignore the summons, keep mum and “protect executive privilege” in the investigation by the “Communist Democrats.”
Bannon also refused to testify, and was indicted last month on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
