Navarro could have dodged prison by just showing up at Jan. 6 committee: legal analyst

All he had to do was show up.

Donald Trump's former adviser Peter Navarro looks set to become a prisoner next week after a final appeal against a contempt of Congress conviction failed Thursday — and a legal expert said it's a sentence that would have been so simple for him to avoid.

Navarro was found guilty of defying a subpoena demanding he supply documents and appear for deposition before the House committee investigating Jan. 6. He had been serving as White House trade adviser under Trump at the time, and peddled unfound conclusions of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election defeat to then President-Elect Joe Biden.

Navarro published a book about the attack on the U.S. Capitol, in which he described a plan called "The Green Bay Sweep" that he painted as the “last best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”

"And to think — all Pete Navarro had to do was show up at the 1/6 committee and plead the 5th all day. He would have saved all the time and money of his contempt trial, and he wouldn't be going to prison next week," read a message posted by legal analyst Allison Gill, who tweets from the account @MuellerSheWrote.

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Conservative attorney George Conway concurred with Gill, replying: "This is absolutely correct."

The language in the Fifth Amendment shields a person from being forced to divulge to authorities or a jury any information that might subject them to criminal prosecution.

On Thursday, the 74-year-old economist learned he failed to sway the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which issued an order almost assuring that he will have to report next week to prison to serve out a four-month sentence.

Navarro has one last Hail Mary, and that is to seek the Supreme Court's intervention.

Failing that, he must report to a Miami lockup by March 19, his attorneys stated in a recent filing.

He joins the ranks of former White House adviser turned media maven Steve Bannon, who was also hit with a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. He has so far remained free to fight an appeal.