Massive Chinese firm sues small Michigan town over opposition to controversial EV battery project
The subsidiary of a billion-dollar Chinese energy firm is suing a tiny Michigan town over local officials’ opposition to the company’s massive electric vehicle (EV) battery project. Gotion Inc. – whose parent company, Gotion High-Tech is based in Hefei, China, and has documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party – filed a breach-of-contract complaint against Green Charter Township in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. The lawsuit is the latest escalation in a months-long feud between Gotion and Green Charter officials who have pumped the brakes on the company’s proposed project within the town’s jurisdiction. “We are saddened and disappointed by their decision to proceed in this direction,” Green Charter Supervisor Jason Kruse told Fox News Digital in a written statement. “As Township Supervisor, my number one concern is protecting the interests of the people of Green Charter Township, and we will vigorously defend our township’s position in this matter,” Kruse added. “We might be a small community, but we refuse to be bullied.” BIDEN ADMIN GREEN-LIGHTS CHINESE EV BATTERY FACTORY IN MICHIGAN, DESPITE LOCAL OPPOSITION According to the lawsuit, Kruse and other elected Green Charter leaders have pursued unlawful actions against the company and are “motivated by clear anti-Gotion animus.” Gotion asked the court to reinstate permits canceled by the township, thereby allowing its battery project to move forward, and further filed a motion for preliminary injunction, requesting that the court intervene quickly. “It’s unfortunate that Gotion has had to resort to litigation to get the township to comply with their obligations under the agreement,” Chuck Thelen, Gotion’s vice president of North American operations, said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital. “We’re unable to comment further since this is now an ongoing legal matter.” NRSC AD PUTS DEM REP ON BLAST FOR SIGNING HUSH AGREEMENT INVOLVING CCP-TIED COMPANY The issue dates back to October 2022, when Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Gotion would invest $2.4 billion to construct two large production plants along with other supporting facilities spanning 260 acres in Green Charter, which is located in northwestern Michigan. Whitmer said the project would shore up Michigan’s status as the “global hub of mobility and electrification.” Under the economic development package awarded to Gotion, the company is set to receive $175 million in taxpayer-funded incentives and more than $500 million in tax incentives. However, the project has generated substantial local uproar, with residents repeatedly expressing concern about Gotion’s ties to China and calling on the Whitmer administration to cancel the project. For example, the projects’ opponents have noted Gotion High-Tech’s corporate bylaws require the company to “carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.” In addition, Gotion High-Tech hosted multiple company trips in 2021 to CCP revolutionary memorials in Anhui Province, China. During the trips, Gotion High-Tech workers wore Red Army outfits and pledged to “fight for communism to the end of my life.” ALABAMA REJECTED CCP-TIED EV COMPANY’S PROJECT THAT BLUE STATES EVENTUALLY GREEN-LIT On Dec. 13, 2022, Green Charter Township approved a resolution in support of Gotion’s project. Months later, in August 2023, the township authorized then-Supervisor James Chapman to privately negotiate the terms of a development agreement with Gotion, that is required to approve certain infrastructure at the site of the project. That agreement was executed between Gotion and Green Charter on Oct. 10, 2023. But, while the town pursued the agreement and negotiations with Gotion, local residents simultaneously organized a recall effort that proved successful in early November 2023. Every member of the town board, including Chapman, was ousted. After Kruse and the other new members of the board took office, they immediately rescinded the October development agreement. “The Development Agreement was and remains a legally binding agreement between Gotion and the Township,” Gotion’s federal lawsuit states. HOUSE CCP PANEL PROBES BIDEN ADMIN OVER CHINESE GREEN ENERGY PROJECT ON US SOIL After the lawsuit was filed, meanwhile, Gotion was blasted by former U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella, who have led opposition to the company’s plans over national security concerns. Last year, the pair founded the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group, a watchdog group devoted to reviewing Chinese economic investments across the country with a particular focus on Michigan. “PRC-based and CCP-tied Gotion continues to carry on every bit the way a company based in authoritarian Communist China would – in secrecy, heavy handedness, above the law operations, and reckless disregard for the environment,” they said in a joint statement Monday. “Gotion, a $40 billion company, does not like the fact five elected officials who rolled over for them were recalled, and now they are suing over alleged ‘breach of contract’ to get the results they want, contrary to the will of the people.” “These are every day citizens from both sides of the aisle in Green Township that are fighting this,” they added. “They are simply seeking to de-risk from this type of subnational incursion from Gotion that our national security and intelligence operations have warned present a national security threat, and preserve their pristine natural surroundings, water, and habitats. This is precisely why every day hard working Americans distrust government and business elites.” Former CIA Directors Leon Panetta and Mike Pompeo have also raised the alarm on the project. Gov. Whitmer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Decoding Trump: How he engaged, deflected or ducked my questions at Mar-a-Lago
I came armed with a fistful of blue cards, and still didn’t get to half the questions, but Donald Trump made a whole lot of news in our Mar-a-Lago interview. What’s revealing is how he chose to answer the most sensitive questions, or to deflect them, and how various media outlets chose to frame them. Some, like the New York Times, ABC and the Hill, played it straight. Other operations, many of them left-leaning, cherry-picked quotes to make Trump look as awful as possible, while ignoring the reasonable-sounding things he said. A classic example was when I asked the former president about the murder of Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison camp. I thought he might duck because of his friendly relationship with Vladimir Putin. But I put it to him point-blank: Is the Russian dictator responsible for the death of the opposition leader? TRUMP: IF YOU’RE GOING TO BAN TIKTOK, BAN FACEBOOK TOO “Perhaps,” Trump said. “I mean, possibly, I could say probably. I don’t know. He’s a young man, so statistically he’d be alive for a long time…Certainly that would look like something very bad happened.” Keep in mind that Trump has never even mentioned Putin in the same paragraph as Navalny, and now he’s saying “probably” responsible. Of course, Trump can’t prove it, and neither can I. Here are some of the headlines: “Trump Couldn’t Bring Himself to Condemn Putin for Alexei Navalny’s Death.” “Trump Delivers Head-Spinningly Awkward Answer to New Question About Putin.” “Trump: ‘I Don’t Know’ If Putin Was Responsible for Navalny’s Death.” You get the idea. Which brings us to Trump’s rhetoric. I asked why he uses words like “vermin” and “poisoning of the blood” to describe illegal migrants – especially since the press says such language was used by Hitler and Mussolini. Trump says he didn’t know that and then repeated “our country is being poisoned” – prompting a wave of headlines that he had doubled down on such harmful language. TRUMP: BIDEN IS ‘BAD FOR ISRAEL’ I guess you could say that – and I’m not letting him off the hook – but the more telling part of his answer came next. I asked the 45th president whether he uses “over the top” and “inflammatory” language to drive the media debate, meaning a focus on his words gets news outlets spending days on his turf, on his preferred issue, in the arguments over whether he went too far. And Trump didn’t deny it, saying he wouldn’t limit himself to “politically correct” verbiage. “It also gets people thinking about very important issues,” he said. “That if you don’t use certain rhetoric, if you don’t use certain words that maybe are not very nice words, nothing will happen.” My theory, based on decades of observing him, was correct. Then he went off on migrants coming from insane asylums and how crime will double – neither of which has been shown to be true on a major scale. The same was true with NATO, when Trump caused a global uproar by saying he’d encourage the Russians to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that don’t pay their fair share of defense costs. That sounds like someone taking a pro-Putin stance, I said. “It sounds like somebody that wants to get people to pay money,” Trump said. In other words, it was a negotiating tactic. Half an hour before airtime, the media were awash in headlines about Trump saying there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the election. So I watched that portion of his speech at an Ohio rally the night before. There have been times when Trump used loaded words to signal the possibility of political violence. This wasn’t one of them. TRUMP: I’LL DEBATE BIDEN ‘ANYTIME, ANYPLACE’ Trump was going on about Chinese cars and their impact on the American auto industry. Then he said if he wasn’t elected there would be a bloodbath – in terms of the impact on jobs. Then he went right back to talking about electric vehicles and industry competition. Now some pundits said the mere use of the word bloodbath was like a bat signal, telling his supporters to get ready for violence. After all, he was so Machiavellian that he added, “That’s going to be the least of it.” But as I said, too many outlets were so in love with the bloodbath story that they wrenched it out of context. Trump also said at the rally that some migrants were “animals” and “not people.” That’s unacceptable language, in my view, but remember what he said about inflammatory words driving the media debate. I wanted to decode his approach for viewers. Trump also made news on abortion. I asked him about a Times story that said he is discussing with advisers a national ban after 16 weeks of pregnancy – not knowing his campaign had dismissed it as fake news – and figured he’d dismiss the story. Nope. He essentially confirmed the 16-week story – saying he’d make a decision “pretty soon,” which would obviously be in that range – that had previously been attributed to unnamed sources. He said, despite my skepticism, that he wants to “make both sides happy.” When Republicans grapple with abortion in the post-Roe world, Trump said, “you have to go with your heart. But beyond that, you also have to get elected.” He said that opposing the three exceptions – rape, incest, life of the mother – caused Pennsylvania Republican Doug Mastriano to lose the governor’s race in a landslide. Then Trump went off on the Democrats and late-term abortions – which I said in one of several fact-checks are exceedingly rare. He also made news on subjects ranging from Israel to TikTok. The first time I met Donald Trump was in 1987, in New York, when he was promoting his first book “The Art of the Deal.” And this, unprompted, is what he said to me: “When I go up to New Hampshire –
Delhi emerges as world’s most polluted capital city for 4th consecutive year, India ranks at…
Delhi’s PM2.5 levels worsened from 89.1 micrograms per cubic metre in 2022 to 92.7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2023.The national capital was ranked the most polluted capital city in the world four times on the trot starting 2018.
Legal experts weigh in on Trump’s options after failure to secure $464M appeal bond: ‘uncharted territory’
Legal experts are weighing in on Donald Trump’s options after attorneys for the former president said he has not been able to secure a $464 million appeal bond he needs following a New York civil fraud judgment against him. Trump’s lawyers wrote in a Monday court filing that obtaining the nearly half-a-billion appeal was a “practical impossibility under the circumstances presented.” David Gelman, a criminal defense attorney and a former deputy district attorney, called the judgment a “unicorn.” He argued that the judge should give Trump a lot more leeway to satisfy the bond because “not even the richest man in the world has $464 million lying around.” A New York Appeals Court judge denied Trump’s request late last month to delay payment of the $464 million owed as a result of the lawsuit brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, but said he would temporarily allow the 2024 front-runner and his sons to continue running their business during the appeals process. A New York Appeals Court judge previously ruled that the former president must post a bond for the full amount of the judgment and that an independent director of compliance will be appointed. That ruling comes after New York Judge Arthur Engoron handed down his decision earlier in February after a months-long trial beginning in October in which the former president was accused of inflating his assets and committing fraud in financial documents. JAMES CARVILLE SAYS BIDEN CAMP RIGHT TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT BLACK VOTE: ‘IT IS A PROBLEM’ Engoron ruled that Trump and other defendants were liable for “persistent and repeated fraud,” “falsifying business records,” “issuing false financial statements,” “conspiracy to falsify false financial statements,” “insurance fraud” and “conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.” Gelman told Fox News Digital that “everyone needs to realize how unprecedented this is.” “There has never been a judgment of this magnitude against a company or individual in the history of New York, so we are really in uncharted territory.” Gelman said Trump has three options: not appeal, ask the court to allow Attorney General James to use his property as collateral, or take it to a federal court and say the New York law is unconstitutional on its face. “Courts really don’t deny bonds when there are other ways to pay. Again, because this is so unprecedented, and I don’t care how rich you are, nobody has that much liquid cash. So if a court had the option to allow a defendant to use some other collateral to satisfy the bond, they will,” Gelman said. He added that there was no reason for the judge or Attorney General James to say no. “You’re dealing with Trump. He’s not going anywhere. He’s the most famous and well known person in the world. It’s not like he can just disappear and can’t be found,” Gelman said. NATHAN WADE CANCELS MAJOR IN-PERSON NETWORK INTERVIEW, CITING FAMILY EMERGENCY Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky told Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum that he “would not count Trump out yet.” Cherkasky said that even if the court denies Trump’s appeal, he “still has paths to move forward through federal court – ultimately to the Supreme Court to complain about Eight Amendment violations.” Per the Eighth Amendment, which deals with cruel and unusual punishment, “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Cherkasky argued that the fines imposed on Trump were so “astronomically high here that it seems unbelievable for the Constitution to permit it under these circumstances.” “I think – and I hope – that the New York Court of Appeals looks at it appropriately,” Cherkasky said. “But like I said, I think even the Supreme Court would have an interest in this case on Eighth Amendment grounds.” Trump attorney Alina Habba told the X22 report Monday she was “confident” Trump’s debt would be dismissed. “Despite the fact that witnesses frankly had said that they were great clients, we all made money, they did nothing wrong, we got slammed with this egregious number, and I’m confident we’ll overturn it,” Habba told the online podcast. Writing on his Truth Social platform later Monday, Trump called the bond set by Engoron “unconsitutitonal, un-American, unprecedented, and practically impossible for ANY company, including one as successful as mine.” “The Bonding Companies have never heard of such a bond of this size before nor do they have the ability to post such a bond, even if they wanted to,” Trump wrote. Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.
CAA: SC to hear pleas for stay on operation of Citizenship Amendment Rules today
The CAA had sparked protests in various parts of the country in late 2019 and early 2020 over alleged discriminatory provisions.
RCB Unbox Event, IPL 2024: When and where to watch, ticket price, celebrities list and more
Ahead of IPL 2024, Royal Challengers Bangalore will host the unboxing event which is set to take place in Bengaluru today (March 19).
Effort to revive Mississippi ballot initiative process is squelched in state Senate
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators are unlikely to restore a ballot initiative process this year after a Senate chairman killed a proposal Monday. The move came days after the Senate voted 26-21 to pass a bill that would have allowed Mississippi residents to put some policy proposals on statewide ballots. But the bill needed another Senate debate and that never happened because Republican Sen. David Parker, of Olive Branch, who chairs the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee, didn’t bring it back up before a Monday deadline. MISSISSIPPI OFFICER FIRED AFTER ALLEGEDLY FORCING DETAINEE TO LICK OWN URINE OFF FLOOR Parker said last week that efforts to revive an initiative process were “on life support” because of significant differences between the House and Senate. Republicans control both chambers. Starting in the 1990s, Mississippi had a process for people to put proposed state constitutional amendments on the ballot, requiring an equal number of signatures from each of the five congressional districts. Mississippi dropped to four districts after the 2000 census, but initiative language was never updated. That prompted the Mississippi Supreme Court to invalidate the initiative process in a 2021 ruling. In 2022 and 2023, the House and Senate disagreed on details for a new initiative process. Republican House Speaker Jason White has said this year that restoring initiatives was a core concern of many voters during the 2023 election. The House adopted a resolution in January to restore the initiative process through a constitutional amendment, which would have eventually required a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. The Senate bill would not have required a two-thirds House vote because it wouldn’t change the state constitution, but it contained provisions that could have been a tough sell in the House. Under the House proposal, an initiative would need more than 150,000 signatures in a state with about 1.9 million voters. To be approved, an initiative would need to receive at least 40% of the total votes cast. The Senate version would have required 67% of the total votes cast. Parker and some other senators said they wanted to guard against out-of-state interests pouring money into Mississippi to get issues on the ballot. Both the House and Senate proposals would have banned initiatives to alter abortion laws. Legislators cited Mississippi’s role in enacting a law that laid the groundwork for the U.S. Supreme Court to upend abortion rights nationwide.
Chinese billionaire pleads guilty to straw donor scheme in New York and Rhode Island
NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese billionaire pleaded guilty to federal election crimes on Monday, admitting that he made thousands of dollars in contributions to New York and Rhode Island political candidates in the names of others. Hui Qin, a Chinese cinema magnate, faces up to 27 years in prison on charges that include orchestrating a straw donor scheme, immigration fraud and using false identification documents. AG GARLAND PLEDGES TO FIGHT VOTER ID LAWS, ELECTION INTEGRITY MEASURES Beginning in December 2021, Qin began working “to find individuals to make more than $10,000 in straw donor contributions” to an unnamed candidate running for citywide election in New York City, prosecutors said. At least one individual donated $1,000 on Qin’s behalf to the citywide candidate. The following day, Qin reached out to a co-conspirator, who told him they expected to be able to obtain up to $20,000 in straw donor contributions for the candidate. Prosecutors also say he engaged in similar straw donor schemes to funnel donations to a U.S. representative in New York and a congressional candidate in Rhode Island. As part of the plea deal, Qin also admitted that he filed a false application for lawful permanent residency status in 2019 when he claimed to have never used an alias. In fact, prosecutors said, he was provided the alias “Muk Lam Li” by an official in the Chinese government in 2008. He used that name to transfer more than $5 million from the Chinese government to a U.S. bank account. He spent a portion of it on a luxury apartment in Manhattan, according to prosecutors. Qin was previously listed on Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion from his stake in film and entertainment companies, including the Honk Kong-based SMI Culture. A phone call to his attorney was not immediately returned. “Qin pleaded guilty today to engaging in a brazen web of deception, spreading lies to federal election and immigration authorities and a state agency,” U.S. Attorney Breon Pace said in a statement. “No one is above the law, no matter their wealth or station in society.”
GOP candidate blasts AP ‘hit piece’ as ‘debunked’ after adult website founder calls alleged profile a ‘prank’
Republican Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno is blasting the Associated Press after a story published days before the primary election linking him to an adult online dating site, which a former intern has taken credit for creating, was called into question by the dating site’s founder. On Friday, a post on X from one of the founders of the online site Adult Friend Finder, who says he wrote “most of the early code,” seemingly rejected a key aspect of an Associated Press report days earlier that suggested “geolocation data,” which is commonly understood as involving an IP address or GPS, linked the account to the area of a Moreno family home. “I reviewed all the available information and it showed that the account had only a single visit, no activity, no profile photo, consistent with a prank or someone just checking out the site,” Andrew Conru, the engineer who founded Adult Friend Finder, wrote on social media. “That’s it.” “The AP report seeming to claim that the available data proves the account was created in Florida is inaccurate, as location information is manually entered during the signup (sic) process. In reality, there appears to be no public geolocation data tied to the account.” OHIO REPUBLICAN US SENATE CANDIDATE BERNIE MORENO HAS SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR GOP MEMBERS WHO ‘DON’T LIKE’ TRUMP Conru continued, “It’s important to recognize that even temporary access to an email account is sufficient to create a fake dating profile in someone else’s name. My sincere apologies to Bernie and anyone similarly affected by the 2016 data incident.” The Associated Press reported on Thursday, days before Tuesday’s primary, that Moreno’s work email address registered on Adult Friend Finder 16 years ago with an account with a caption that said, “looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling.” The Associated Press reported that “geolocation data” it gathered from a 2016 data leak from Adult Friend Finder showed that the account “was set up for use in a part of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where property records show Moreno’s parents owned a home at the time.” “Beyond the work email, the profile lists Moreno’s correct date of birth, while geolocation data indicates that the account was set up for use in a part of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where property records show Moreno’s parents owned a home at the time,” the story said. TRUMP-BACKED GOP CANDIDATE RIPS ‘SICK’ REPORT TYING HIM TO GAY HOOKUP WEBSITE: ‘DESPERATE PEOPLE’ The Associated Press story did not confirm that Moreno created the account. The Moreno campaign denied that he had anything to do with the account, and a campaign lawyer provided a statement from a former intern who knew Moreno’s personal information and claimed responsibility, saying the incident was a “juvenile prank.” Moreno, his family and supporters quickly labeled the Associated Press story as “debunked” and a “vile hit piece” following Conru’s social media posts that explained how his website tracked location by the zip code entered in 2008, not using an IP address that would provide specific geolocation data. “My husband and I have known Matt Dolan and his family for years. For him to stoop this low, simply because he’s losing this race is disgusting, disgraceful, and he should be embarrassed,” Moreno’s wife, Bridget, said in a statement, pointing the finger at Moreno’s opponent, Republican state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose super PAC released an ad hitting Moreno over the report less than 24 hours after publication. TRUMP REVEALS ‘VERY FIRST ACTIONS’ HE’LL TAKE AS PRESIDENT DURING OHIO RALLY, HAMMERS BIDEN’S BORDER POLICIES “If he’s willing to slander my husband simply to win a political election, he doesn’t belong anywhere near elected office,” she continued. “I know family values might not mean much to Matt Dolan, but they mean a lot to this family. His desperate attempts will backfire, and I have full confidence that Ohioans will see through his dirty tricks and elect an actual conservative to the U.S. Senate. Now that this story has proven to be 100% false, if Matt even has an ounce of integrity left in him, he will publicly disavow this slime coming from his family-funded Super PAC.” The Dolan campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. On Friday, Moreno rejected the report as a “sick, last-minute attack by desperate people.” Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, who has endorsed Moreno, wrote on X that Conru’s post showed the story was “verifiably false,” and Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, also a Moreno endorser, wrote on X that the AP story was “falling apart.” In a statement to Fox News Digital, Associated Press Vice President of Corporate Communications Lauren Easton defended the story. “This is a deeply reported piece of accountability journalism in an election year. We stand by the story,” Easton said. “We did not report the location where the account was created.” Easton also pointed to a follow-up tweet from Conru in which he said he “clarified his response” but which also appeared to show that the “geolocation data” AP had was based on a zip code that was entered by the user who could have registered from anywhere. “Ah, just noticed what people are calling geolocation,” Conru wrote. “In 2008, when someone entered any zip code during signum (sic), we just had a lookup table to map it to latitude and longitude. Geolocation today means to deduce someone’s location based on the browser’s IP address which isn’t the case here.” Geolocation, the term used by AP, is currently defined as “the process of determining the location of an electronic device, as a computer, [cellphone], satellite, etc.” “My review was looking for ‘geolocation’ and there is none,” Conru wrote in another X post. “In 2008, when someone entered any zip code during signum , we just had a lookup table to map it to latitude and longitude. Geolocation today means to deduce someone’s location based on the browser’s IP address which isn’t the case here. As I have been building websites since
US Supreme Court says Peter Navarro, former Trump White House adviser, must report to prison
Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro must report to prison after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to stave off the jail term as he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction. Navarro is due to report to prison in Miami to serve a four-month federal prison sentence for his conviction of misdemeanor charges for defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks. He requested to stay free while he appealed the conviction. Navarro’s attorney declined to comment to Fox News Digital about the matter. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said he had “no basis to disagree” with the appeals court ruling that he begin his sentence. DOJ RECOMMENDS 6 MONTH SENTENCE FOR FORMER TRUMP ADVISER PETER NAVARRO Navarro, who served as former President Trump’s trade adviser, was the second Trump aide convicted of misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon previously received a four-month sentence but was allowed to stay free pending appeal by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by Trump. Navarro said he couldn’t cooperate with the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack because Trump had invoked executive privilege, an argument which lower courts have rejected. FORMER TRUMP ADVISER NAVARRO CONVICTED OF CONTEMPT AFTER DEFYING JAN. 6 SUBPOENA “When I received that congressional subpoena, the second, I had an honest belief that the privilege had been invoked, and I was torn. Nobody in my position should be put in conflict between the legislative branch and the executive branch. Is that the lesson of this entire proceeding? Get a letter and a lawyer? I think in a way it is,” Navarro said at a January sentencing hearing. “I am disappointed with a process where a jury convicted me, and I was unable to provide a defense, one of the most important elements of our justice system.” He described the attack on the U.S. Capitol as “one of the worst days of my life.” The lower courts found that Navarro couldn’t actually prove Trump had invoked executive privilege. The high court is also preparing to hear arguments on whether Trump himself has presidential immunity from charges alleging he interfered in the 2020 election. Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.