Peter Navarro, who served as a senior trade adviser in the Trump administration and was released from prison on Wednesday morning, just in time to fly to Milwaukee to speak at the Republican National Convention, was welcomed to the stage with raucous applause, cheers and raised fists.
Mr. Navarro, who served four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, delivered a fiery and defiant speech that made it apparent that not all Republicans share in their party’s calls for national unity and a cooling of political rhetoric.
“The Jan. 6 committee demanded that I betray Donald John Trump to save my own skin,” Mr. Navarro said after taking the stage and receiving a minute-long ovation from the crowd of delegates. “I refused.”
Mr. Navarro was closely involved with Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and remain in power, and he has openly discussed, in interviews and in a book he published, how he and others sought to delay Congress’s certification of the results on Jan. 6.
The former White House official used his speech at the convention to dehumanize undocumented immigrants as “a whole army of illiterate illegal aliens” and to cast his sentence for defying the Jan. 6 committee as a martyrdom — warning Republicans that they could be next.
“You may be thinking this cannot happen to you,” Mr. Navarro said, shaking his head. “Make no mistake: They are already coming for you.”
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