Not the 4th not the 6th but the 5th
Trump said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination and did not answer questions during a deposition on Wednesday with New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office.
In a lengthy public statement, Trump lambasted James as a “failed politician” and accused her of having “intentionally colluded with others” in her three-year probe of the Trump Organization, calling the inquiry a political fishing expedition against his family.
Please. That pool is so full of fish they don’t have room to swim.
The statement continued: “If there was any question in my mind, the raid of my home, Mar-a-Lago, on Monday by the FBI, just two days prior to this deposition, wiped out any uncertainty. I have absolutely no choice because the current Administration and many prosecutors in this Country have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency.”
Evil criminal is furious that law enforcement is looking into his evil crimes.
James is wrapping up an aggressive three-year probe into a decade-long pattern of alleged financial wrongdoing at the Trump Organization, the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate for which Trump is the sole owner and beneficiary.
James has signaled that after her investigation wraps up, her office will bring a several-hundred-page lawsuit against Trump and his business that could seek millions in fines and even the dissolution of the company itself.
I look forward to reading the several hundred pages!
If James’ eventual lawsuit against Trump lands before a jury, Trump’s taped deposition, in which he repeatedly pleads the Fifth, would be played in open court. Under New York law, the judge would then instruct jurors that they are allowed to draw what’s called an “adverse inference” from the tape.
In other words, unlike in a criminal case, the jury would be able to hold Trump’s refusal to answer questions against him as an indication of guilt.
But it’s his conssisooshunall right.
As Popehat noted, the absolutely sensible thing for Trump to do was to plead the 5th. As Popehat also noted, Trump has for years denigrated people who take the 5th, which at the very least makes him a massive hypocrite.
It’s a shame I don’t like popcorn, because the opportunity to go through several bags of it is pretty strong right now.
From what I’ve just been reading it may not have been sensible in this case, because it can be used against him in a way it couldn’t be if he’d done it at a criminal trial.
Well, sometimes the justice system backs you into a corner. Incriminate yourself, or leave it to others to make the argument against you. If a lawyer told me to shut up I would.
Rob, you should absolutely do what the lawyer you can hire tells you to do. Trump… well, he’s infamous for not paying people he hires. And for getting his lawyers in trouble with the law themselves. So the lawyers who will still work for him are the bottom of the barrel, trying to gain work through notoriety. It’s not outside possibility that the advice they gave him was terrible.
Whether or not to plead the 5th in a civil matter is a balancing of risk. How much does it hurt you in the civil matter, and what could that cost you, vs. how likely it is that you will be criminally prosecuted and what’s at stake there. It’s rare that it’s a no-brainer “of course you plead the 5th” or “of course you don’t.”
Ultimately that’s a client decision, all we do is advise on the risks.
Given that Trump has numerous active criminal investigations against him, he pretty much has to plead the Fifth anytime he is under oath. Even a single admission of activity that could enable a prosecutor to bring charges is going to be used, now, so he has to not do that. And his lawyers, at least, know that he’s actually not that good of a liar (in the sense of forging a plausible deception); if he starts winging it on the stand, the odds of both perjuring AND incriminating himself at the same time are damnably high. the fact that this WILL likely play against him in the civil suit is a small matter, by comparison–he can always grift the final judgement from the Fifth Avenuers.
I would not be in the least surprised if the questions that Trump spent so many hours refusing to answer were mostly basically harmless, and the answers to which couldn’t even get him in trouble. He’s already well known for doing things just because he’s a stubborn fool, even things that are not in his own interests.
James Garnett, I grew up with a pathological liar, and that was his pattern, as well. Some of the lies he told were so easily checked and would make a bigger fool of him than telling the truth ever could, but he continued telling them, inventing a “truth” around himself that others could debunk easily, but which was immune to fact checking in his mind.
In fact, this person makes me think of Trump in most ways, except he can’t even afford fake gold.
I’m ok with him pleading the 5th, but I think this should be added to the Amendment
https://farcornercafe.blogspot.com/2022/08/sextion-6.html
I’ve also seen it pointed out that in this case the civil action is against a Trump company, not Trump personally. A negative inference may still apply, but less damaging than if the action were against him personally. Time will tell.