Ex-advisor to former President Donald Trump Peter Navarro was released from federal prison on Wednesday after serving a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena.

He refused to testify and turn over documents to Congress based on a belief that Trump had executive privilege and that cooperating with the subpoena would violate that privilege.

Navarro served his time at the low-security correctional facility in Miami, in a dormitory for older inmates.

But should he even have been prosecuted in the first place?

Appeal in process

Navarro appealed the conviction and the judge's decision to enforce the sentence before the appeal was decided, but he ended up having to serve the time anyway.

Even the Supreme Court declined to hear his emergency appeal and just let the sentence take effect. Maybe the court was concerned about looking too political or taking Trump's side, or it just didn't see the case as important enough to intervene in.

If the appeals court overturns his conviction, what is the remedy? No one can give him four months of his life back.

Navarro traveled to Milwaukee after being released in order to speak to attendees on Wednesday night.

Too controlling

He told the audience, "I went to prison, so you won't have to."

"If we don't control our government, their government will control us," he added.

Navarro is not the only Trump staffer to be sent to jail for defying a congressional subpoena.

Steve Bannon has also been sent to jail for refusing to testify about Trump in a case very similar to Navarro's. He said as he went to surrender at Danbury, Connecticut that he was "proud" of his sentence.

Bannon similarly claimed executive privilege, but was not allowed to use that defense in the case. These two Trump staffers were the first to ever be charged with contempt for defying a congressional subpoena and the first to be sent to jail for it.

Several Biden staffers, his own son Hunter Biden, and other Democrats have done the same thing and were never charged criminally for their actions.