- Peter Navarro argues in a new book that Trump was downed by "bad personnel" in his first term.
- Navarro suggests Jeanine Pirro to lead DOJ as attorney general and other new blood in a second term.
Two months before he is set to stand trial on contempt of Congress charges, ex-White House advisor Peter Navarro is releasing a book in September blaming former President Donald Trump's fall on the "bad personnel" who surrounded him inside the White House.
With hopes of second Trump term, Navarro has some thoughts on cabinet officials he believes might prove more loyal if the former president retakes the White House in 2025. Navarro's forthcoming book — titled "Taking Back Trump's America" — spells out his idea of a dream team surrounding Trump in the event he runs again and wins election to a second term.
Navarro, a top trade adviser in the White House now facing a federal trial in November, was not in Trump's cabinet. According to Axios, Navarro's ideal cabinet in a second Trump administration would include a mix of "old gang" alumni from his first term and new blood who have, like him, paid fealty to the former president. Navarro suggests former Judge Jeanine Pirro, now a Fox News host, for attorney general; former Trump national security advisor Robert O'Brien for secretary of state; and Kash Patel, a former Pentagon official in the administration's final weeks, for director of national intelligence.
As Insider first reported in 2021, Trump advisors considered installing Patel as the deputy FBI director, in a move that would have broken the bureau's tradition of having a career agent serve as the second-ranking official. Trump also weighed replacing FBI Director Chris Wray with Bill Evanina, a top national security official, but the former president backed away after then-Attorney General William Barr threatened to resign if he followed through.
In his memoir released earlier this year, Barr said the consideration of Patel for deputy FBI director showed "a shocking detachment from reality."
Patel has drawn scrutiny from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which subpoenaed him in September 2021. At the time of the Capitol attack, Patel served as chief of staff to Chris Miller, the acting secretary of defense, and he is considered a key witness in the House committee's investigation into how the White House and Pentagon prepared for and responded to the events of January 6.
For Navarro, other ideal cabinet picks would include former Rep. Sean Duffy, now a Fox News contributor, as secretary of transportation and Oracle CEO Safra Catz or Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as ambassador to the United Nations. Navarro writes that he would also want Ben Carson and Ken Cuccinelli to reprise their roles heading the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Homeland Security, respectively.
Navarro served as a top White House trade advisor during the Trump administration and would likely return for a senior role in a second term, according to Axios.
In June, a federal grand jury indicted Navarro on a pair of contempt of Congress charges in connection with his defiance of the House committee investigating January 6 and Trump's efforts to overturn the election. Navarro tried to delay the trial to 2023, arguing that he needed the end of 2022 to promote his book.
But the federal judge presiding over his case scheduled the trial to begin in November.
In a sign of Navarro's grim trial prospects, a jury in Washington, DC, needed less than three hours of deliberation to find Trump ally Steve Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress in connection with his own defiance of the House January 6 committee. But, before his trial conviction, Bannon found time to give a review of Navarro's book.
In a promotional page on Simon & Schuster website, Bannon describes Navarro's book as a "a brass-knuckled insider's account of the merciless 2020 fall and miraculous 2024 rise of the White House of Trump."