White House trade advisor Peter Navarro says the President’s staff is moving forward “under the assumption that there will be a second Trump term”.

“Our assumption is the second Trump term, we think he won that election, and any speculation about what Joe Biden might do I think his moot at this point,” Navarro said.

Navarro inserted himself into the debate over the election during an interview on CNBC instead of discussing the President’s recent executive order banning investments in Chinese companies that advance that country’s military capabilities.

“What we seek here is verifiable ballots, certifiable ballots, and an investigation into what are growing numbers of allegations of fraud under signed affidavits by witnesses and my own view looking at this election, we have what appears in some sense to be an immaculate deception,” Navarro said Friday.

Navarro echoed President Donald Trump’s assertion of election fraud without providing any evidence to back up his claims.

“But if you look statistically at what happened, clearly the president won this election, was leading on election day. And then, after election day, somehow in these key battleground states, they got just enough votes to catch up to the President,” Navarro added.

Navarro was appointed as Director of the National Trade Council, a newly formed position, on Inauguration Day in 2017, but that position was dissolved in April 2017 and converted into the Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.

Since then, Navarro has appeared frequently on news shows promoting Trump’s trade policies, especially toward China.

One of Navarro’s policy areas includes federal support for manufacturing vaccines for the COVID-19 virus, although he declined to answer a question about deployment of vaccines, saying “Not my lane.”

Navarro advised Trump’s first campaign on foreign trade policy and was rewarded with a position within the White House.

Recently, Navarro clashed with COVID-19 Task Force head Dr. Anthony Fauci when Navarro promoted the use of Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the virus.

Before his White House appointment, Navarro had been a professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Irvine, and published several books on trade focused on China.

Navarro, a native of Massachusetts, lived in San Diego in the 1980s and 1990s while teaching at UC San Diego, the University of San Diego, and UC Irvine. He earned his Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and his PhD in Economics from Harvard University.

During his time in San Diego, Navarro ran for political office five times, but lost all of his campaigns.

In 1992, Navarro ran for Mayor of San Diego, finishing first in the Primary Election but eventually losing to Susan Golding in the General Election. During that campaign, Navarro was fined $4,000 for not properly disclosing loans to his campaign from his mother.

The following year, Navarro ran for San Diego City Council and lost. The year after that he ran for a seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and lost.

In 1996, Navarro ran his most high-profile campaign when challenged first-term Congressman Brian Bilbray. Navarro had run to fill Bilbray’s seat on the Board of Supervisors.

During his campaign for Congress, Navarro was endorsed by then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he supported Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign that year. Hillary Clinton came to San Diego to help campaign for Navarro. In the end, Navarro lost that ran too.

In 2001, Navarro ran what would be his final political campaign when he sought a seat on the San Diego City Council in a special election after Councilwoman Valerie Stallings resigned.

Navarro end up in fourth place and failed to make the run-off election which eventually saw Donna Frye win the seat and go on to serve two more full terms in office.

Longtime San Diego political consultant Larry Remer recently said in an interview that Navarro was “the biggest asshole I’ve ever known.”

Former Vice-President Joe Biden is currently leading President Donald Trump by over 5 million votes throughout the country, and in head in enough states to lead in the Electoral College by a margin of 290 to 217.

Election results have not been certified by each state, but Trump and many of his supporters have claimed the election was fraudulent and have called the results into question.

The Trump campaign and the Republican Party have filed dozens of lawsuits in several states where Biden currently leads, claiming voting irregularities and fraud but have yet failed to provide evidence of widespread illegalities.

So far, several of the lawsuits have been dismissed by courts for lack of admissible evidence.

In one case in Michigan, the judge ruled that an affidavit signed by a person claiming an unnamed person told him what others had heard about potentially fraudulent ballots was inadmissible as evidence.

In another case in Nevada, the judge dismissed the case after a signed affidavit stating that the person heard a supervisor say he would separate late ballots so they could hand-stamp prior dates on them was ruled to be inadmissible hearsay testimony.