Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has been going into great detail about his efforts, assisted by Steve Bannon, to get former President Trump’s election fraud falsehoods off the ground in late 2020 and January 2021. The latest comes in interviews with The Daily Beast and Rolling Stone.
Navarro detailed his role in crafting a plan dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep,” named after a daring football play run by the NFL’s Packers. The scheme, concocted by Navarro and Bannon, was partially realized — an effort to get Republican members of Congress to block the Electoral College vote count by calling on sitting members of Congress during the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to object to the counting of votes from six battleground states. Each state challenge, Navarro had theorized, would force four hours of debate in both chambers, with the aim of of creating a 24-hours GOP propaganda blitz that would’ve run the clock as long as possible for then-VP Mike Pence, who presided over the Senate, to delay the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory by sending the contested tallies back to the states.
In his memoir, published last year, Navarro outlines his close contact with Bannon in the planning of the “Green Bay Sweep.” He detailed that effort further to the Daily Beast last month, saying that it involved coordination with GOP lawmakers such as Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Daily Beast. “It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”
The GOP lawmakers’ commitment to the plan played out when Cruz signed off on Gosar’s objection to counting Arizona’s electoral ballots during the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress.
Navarro and Bannon theorized that media coverage of their plan would apply more pressure on Pence to drag his feet on the electoral count.
“The Green Bay Sweep was very well thought out. It was designed to get us 24 hours of televised hearings,” Navarro told the Daily Beast. “But we thought that we could bypass the corporate media by getting this stuff televised.”
Navarro similarly detailed that plan to Rolling Stone in an interview published this week, revealing that he personally briefed Trump in the Oval Office on his so-called “research” of baseless theories boosting the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 presidential election. Navarro claimed that Trump directed Navarro’s findings to be distributed to all GOP lawmakers on the Hill.
Navarro’s recent interviews offers more insight into his efforts to push the Big Lie, some of which were apparent in real time.
In December 2020, Navarro circulated a report titled the “Immaculate Deception” that rehashed debunked Trump complaints about supposed election irregularities that, in the weeks before, judges had laughed out of court. Navarro also compiled other dossiers on boosting the Big Lie shortly after the election that were titled “The Art of the Steal” and “Yes, Trump Won.”
Navarro also called for the delay of the Georgia Senate runoffs in January last year (which ultimately handed Democrats a functional Senate majority) in another effort to reinforce Trump’s election fraud falsehoods.
Days before the Capitol insurrection, Navarro appeared on Fox News to further push the then-President’s voter fraud delusions by falsely proclaiming that Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 could be changed.
