I have to thank Peter Navarro. Without him, I wouldn’t know that prison consultant is an occupation and career path. Navarro’s prison consultant is a man named Sam Mangel whose job is “to help prepare well-heeled convicts and their families for time behind bars.” Navarro, of course, is the “first former White House official ever jailed for contempt of Congress.” His offense was refusing to appear before the special committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt.
Navarro just completed his four month sentence:
The federal correctional facility where Navarro has lived since March is one of the oldest prison camps in the country, housing fewer than 200 inmates in its aging infrastructure, with a large Puerto Rican population…
…Navarro, who is in his 70s, worked as a law library clerk during his time in the prison camp, his prison consultant Sam Mangel told CNN.
“Everybody has to work,” Mangel said. “It gave him a chance to write.”
Mangel said Navarro was liked and respected by his fellow inmates while in the prison.
“When I went to visit him, guys were coming up to him, high-fiving him,” Mangel said.
I don’t know if the aging mostly Puerto Rican inmates of this Connecticut prison camp were truly high-fiving Navarro or not. The truth is that I don’t have any experience with prisons. I’ve never been in one and I’ve never visited one. My personal experience with involuntary detention is restricted to drug rehabilitation centers. And one thing I’ve taken away from all my visits with rehab patients and my one voluntary stint in a rehab myself, is that they warn you before release not to return to the same “people, places, and things.” Here’s a typical rehab advisement:
When you’re reading information pertaining to addiction, it doesn’t take long before you encounter the phrase “people, places, and things.” But why are these so important, and what do they have to do with addiction and recovery? The people, places, and things you experience every day play a vital role in encouraging or discouraging substance use, no matter the stage of addiction or recovery. If you want to remain substance-free, you must make some changes to the people, places, and things with which you normally engage.
The phrase “people, places, and things” refers to triggers. Triggers are the problematic cues that lead to a craving, which is a strong—often overwhelming—desire to obtain and use your substance of abuse.
This means who shouldn’t leave rehab and go hang out with the same people or go to the same places where you used drugs or alcohol, and you should be wary of things you associate with using, whether it’s listening to certain music, partying on payday, holidays and weekends or it’s simple boredom and anxiety.
If your circle of friends is made up of hard partiers, they’re not only going to trigger you to party, they’ll most likely encourage it. If you try to hang around them without partying, they might treat you like a turd in the punch bowl. No one wants to be a party-pooper.
And the same thing is true of criminals. You don’t want to come of prison and immediately go hang out with your criminal gang. You might get a strong—often overwhelming—desire to commit new criminal offenses. And, even if you don’t, they’re going to be plotting new violations of the law. Do you want them to suspect you of snitching? Are you going to report them to the police or become an accessory to their unlawful schemes.
In some cases, the terms of probation will include not associating with members of your old crowd, but that’s not the case for Peter Navarro. And that’s why he’s free to head from his prison camp straight to Milwaukee.
Navarro is expected to quickly travel to Milwaukee so he can appear at the Republican National Convention, where his former boss has been formally nominated as the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.
He’s going to hang out with Donald Trump and the rest of his old coup-plotting criminal gang. That’s the same people. He’s going to attending a partisan political event. That’s the same place. And, the Associated Press reported several days ago that Navarro is expected to speak at the convention. The reason the January 6 committee subpoenaed Navarro in the first place is because of public statements he made about the 2020 election. So, speaking about the 2024 election is the same thing.
This is a recipe for rapid recidivism. We should expect Navarro to begin criming again, perhaps as soon as today. If he were smart, he’d go fishing in Montana or something and pay no attention to politics. But if Navarro were smart, he never would have wound up in a Connecticut prison camp in the first place.
