Former First Girl Jill Biden’s factotum Anthony Bernal refused to testify earlier than Congress final week for a scheduled interview in regards to the Joe Biden autopen scandal.
Now Bernal might be subpoenaed by the Home Oversight Committee to compel his testimony about who was actually working the White Home throughout Biden’s time period — or face potential felony prices of contempt.
That’s an actual chance for Bernal and different former White Home officers implicated within the coverup of Biden’s cognitive decline, contemplating that the Biden administration broke all norms after they jailed Trump White Home adviser Peter Navarro and former adviser Steve Bannon final yr for failing to adjust to congressional subpoenas to testify earlier than Nancy Pelosi’s star chamber investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
What goes round comes round.
Navarro, 75, was the primary White Home official in historical past to be imprisoned for a contempt of Congress conviction.
He served a four-month sentence in a federal jail in Miami final yr.
Dem DOJ’s precedent
In contrast, the very Division of Justice that set a chilling precedent with its prosecutions of Navarro and Bannon (who additionally served 4 months in a federal jail in Connecticut final yr) gave itself a move when then-Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland equally was held in contempt for defying a congressional subpoena at hand over embarrassing audio recordings of Biden’s interview with particular counsel Robert Hur.
As a senior White Home adviser on Jan. 6, 2021, Navarro’s conviction ought to have had a better bar than Bernal’s or every other former adviser’s.
However the Biden DOJ and one in every of their pet DC judges, Obama-appointed District Choose Amit Mehta, ignored Navarro’s respectable issues about govt privilege and punished him for his loyalty to his boss, President Trump.
It was only one egregious facet of the weaponized justice system ushered in by Democrats over the past administration, which focused Trump and his allies as “home terrorists,” and censored and demonized political dissent.
The excellent news for Navarro is that Trump received again the White Home final November and instantly rehired the previous political prisoner as a senior adviser.
In his upcoming ebook “I Went to Jail So You Gained’t Have To: A Love and Lawfare Story in Trump Land,” Navarro recounts how he was arrested by 5 armed FBI brokers on June 3, 2022 when he was on the gangway about to board a flight from Reagan Nationwide Airport to Nashville, the place he was scheduled to look on Mike Huckabee’s TV present.
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The diminutive 72-year-old was handcuffed, positioned in leg irons, strip-searched and thrown in a jail cell which as soon as housed John Hinckley Jr., the would-be murderer of Ronald Reagan.
Navarro’s fiancée, Bonnie “Pixie” Brenner, who was with him when he was arrested, discovered the expertise “very traumatic,” he says. “They perp walked her out.”
He stated he was handled as if he had been “an Al Qaeda terrorist,” and even Mehta later agreed that the arrest was excessively heavy handed.
“It’s curious . . . at a minimal why the federal government handled Mr. Navarro’s arrest in the way in which it did,” Mehta instructed the courtroom. “It’s a federal crime, however it’s not a violent crime.”
The lead FBI agent who arrested Navarro was Walter Giardina, who’s now a goal of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s investigation into the weaponization of the FBI and DOJ towards Trump and his allies.
Whistleblowers have instructed Grassley that Giardina “overtly acknowledged his want to research Trump, even when it meant false predication” due to his hostility to the then-former president.
‘Black swan occasion’
A number of weeks earlier than Navarro was arrested, Giardina had confirmed up at his door on the daybreak to ship a subpoena.
Navarro stated he then contacted the FBI and provided to return in for a voluntary interview.
“I actually reached out [and said] right here’s my place, can we discuss. That ought to have been sufficient for them to say, ‘are available in and discuss’ or ‘are available in, you’re indicted.’ That’s what they normally do with white collar offenses,” he stated. “For the Biden DOJ [prosecuting him] was a black swan occasion that went towards a 50-year coverage of immunity for senior White Home advisers. It was an actual violation of the structure.”
Navarro remains to be interesting his conviction.
Giardina, who’s believed to be on suspension on the FBI, was additionally concerned within the debunked Russia collusion investigation towards Trump, particular counsel Robert Mueller’s subsequent investigation, and different instances involving Trump allies Dan Scavino and Roger Stone, in addition to the Hillary Clinton emails case.
Giardina was an “preliminary recipient of the Steele File,” in response to Grassley, and falsely claimed that the bogus Clinton campaign-originated smear sheet towards Trump was corroborated as “true.”
Giardina additionally “electronically wiped the laptop computer he was assigned whereas working for Mueller exterior of established protocol for document preservation, elevating the likelihood that he destroyed authorities data.” One other FBI agent, former FBI Washington Subject Workplace assistant boss Timothy Thibault, is one in every of a number of G-men implicated within the FBI’s Get-Trump operation.
In an e mail obtained by Grassley from Could 19, 2022, Giardina tells Thibault and colleagues that the DC US Lawyer’s Workplace “after session with essential Justice . . . want to cost Navarro within the subsequent two weeks.”
“Wow. Nice,” replied Thibault.
Thibault was the FBI’s “level man” to handle whistleblower Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden’s former enterprise accomplice, who got here ahead with damning revelations earlier than the 2020 election about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s multimillion-dollar affect peddling offers with China.
Bobulinski spent over 5 hours secretly being interviewed on the FBI Washington Subject workplace on Oct. 23, 2020, and handed over the contents of three cellphones containing messages between Hunter and his enterprise companions, together with emails and monetary paperwork, together with the “10 % for the Massive Man” e mail that was additionally discovered on Hunter’s deserted laptop computer.
He and his lawyer had been instructed Thibault would contact them, however they by no means heard from him — or anybody on the FBI — once more.
Whistleblowers have instructed Grassley that Thibault, who has resigned from the FBI, had allegedly been concerned in “a scheme” to “undermine derogatory info linked to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”
Newly ruthless
Extra proof is predicted to emerge in regards to the scheme to focus on Trump and his allies whereas masking up for Joe Biden. Inner FBI emails and paperwork proceed to floor now that the Trump administration has entry to hidden troves of data, and Republicans have management of Congress, with a newfound ruthless dedication to carry wrongdoers to account.
“My hope is that they’ll discover what we imagine exists which is improper communications between the division of justice, the FBI, the White Home and J6 committee referring to our [Navarro and Bannon’s] prosecution,” says Navarro. True to kind, whereas he was in jail, Navarro additionally uncovered what he says is a hidden multibillion-dollar scandal inside the jail system, which he’ll reveal in his new ebook.
