Trump adviser Navarro: Rioters on Jan. 6 hurt plan to challenge election result

A top adviser to former President Trump is expressing frustration that a plan hatched by lawyers and political strategists in Trump’s orbit to challenge the result of the 2020 presidential election was hindered when violence broke out at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. 

Peter Navarro, Trump’s former top aide on trade, said Tuesday during an interview on MSNBC that Trump’s allies believed there was legal basis for the plan, which would have involved Republican members of Congress rejecting the election’s result and kicking the votes back to state legislatures, something he referred to as the “Green Bay sweep.” 

“The plan was simply this: We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep. The sweep was simply that. We were gonna challenge the results of the election in the six battleground states,” Navarro said.

“And basically these were the places where we believed that if the votes were sent back those battleground states and looked at again, that there would be enough concern amongst the legislatures that most or all of those states would decertify the election,” he added. 

Earlier in the interview, Navarro falsely stated that “the election was in all likelihood stolen through fraud and election irregularities.” 

No evidence has been presented to support claims that widespread voter fraud led to Trump’s loss.

“All this required was peace and calm on Capitol Hill,” Navarro continued, before praising Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other GOP members of Congress for “beautifully” objecting to the certification of the results of the Electoral College.

During a separate interview with Rolling Stone this week, Navarro said he primarily worked with former White House top strategist Stephen Bannon on the plan to whip votes and drum up support for a plan to stop the election certification on Jan. 6. Bannon was indicted by the federal government late last year for defying a congressional subpoena in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

“He was the strategist involved. He was the guy who was coordinating the whipping of the votes, right? There were over 100 congressmen — both the House of Representatives and senators — that were lined up to execute that plan,” Navarro said. “And it started flawlessly, but the violence overtook that event. The rest, as they say, is history.”