The DOJ isn’t messing around when it comes to Peter Navarro
It’s notable that the DOJ actually went out and arrested Peter Navarro on Friday, after having previously let Steve Bannon self surrender for arrest on the same charge. Navarro was getting on a plane, but he was just heading to Nashville, so it’s not as if he were attempting to flee the country. The DOJ could have just told him to stay home and surrender himself. Instead it made a point of going out and scooping him up in public when he wasn’t expecting it. The DOJ is clearly trying to rattle Navarro. It wants him out there ranting to the cameras about how hard it came down on him. But why?
Is this because the DOJ thinks it can rattle him into flipping if it comes down on him emphatically enough? Is the DOJ doing this because Navarro has been making threats about retaliation? Is the DOJ just tired of taking heat from pundits, and is letting Navarro do some unwitting PR for the DOJ?
Is the DOJ trying to spook Navarro into further incriminating himself in front of the cameras? If Navarro screws up badly enough and the judge ends up revoking bail, Navarro won’t last ten minutes in jail and will have to strongly consider flipping on Trump.
The DOJ’s strategy might become more clear as time goes on. But for now, at the least, it’s clear that the DOJ is not taking a kid gloves approach with Navarro to try to get him to flip on Trump in friendly fashion. The DOJ is busting heads on this one, relatively speaking.
Observers on social media always root for the DOJ to take the most “aggressive” approach possible, mostly for the entertainment value, without regard for whether it might be the most effective approach. Sometimes you need a kid gloves approach to make a certain kind of target comfortable enough to want to flip. But when it comes to Navarro, the DOJ apparently believes the most effective strategy for breaking him is to simply go at him as emphatically as possible.
