Peter Navarro, a former adviser to Donald Trump, personally criticized former presidential lawyer Sidney Powell in 2021 for his “far-fetched” conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election. (See the clip below.)
In audio that aired on MSNBC, Navarro was heard complaining to former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg about the damage Powell was doing to the Trump team’s broader election fraud claims, which Navarro helped spread.
“You don’t know how much damage he did to our efforts,” Navarro told Grossberg.
“He was a turning point because he couldn’t prove his case because he was so far gone that people backed off. We were on the verge of some breakthroughs at the state and legislative level, and then this happened. And I was like … ‘Damn, this is not good.'”
In a statement to MSNBC this week, Navarro continued to bash Powell.
“Sidney Powell is basically the worst thing that ever happened to the problem of election integrity,” he said. “As honest as I am with Abby Grossberg as I am honest with the American people.”
The release of the audio clip comes after MSNBC this week aired a separate, private tape involving a Trump ally on allegations of election fraud. In a November 2020 recording of Grossberg, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was heard asking for “real evidence” to support the Trump team’s allegations, which were made without evidence.
The possibility that Grossberg, who has made numerous secret recordings with Fox News hosts and guests, could play the clips in court helped the network reach a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems earlier this week in a defamation lawsuit related to fraud claims. election, Bloomberg reported.
Appearing on MSNBC, lawyers for Grossberg detailed the former producer’s own lawsuit involving Fox News: a lawsuit in Delaware alleging “civil conspiracy … to have him testify falsely to cover up Fox’s wrongdoing,” and a case in New York alleging “gender discrimination , glass ceiling discrimination, [and a] fail to promote.”
The lawyer, Gerry Filippatos, went on to name Tucker Carson’s show, saying Grossberg experienced “one of the worst and most toxic work environments” on the Fox News program.