Two lessons... 1. Dont lie under oath 2. Dont answer questions about sex in an investigation on real estate dealings that went nowhere.
climton, for all his strengths, had a massive ego, especially around how smart he was. And the man was objectively brilliant, so he just assumed he could outthink and outsmart Starr and that team. Hard to do when they have actually evidence against you, even if it was on a dumb charge. His hubris damn near cost him his presidency.
A reminder that pleading the 5th is different in a civil trial than a criminal one. “Once a witness in a civil suit has invoked his or her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, the trier of fact is entitled to draw an adverse inference from the witness’s refusal to testify.” -- Chaffee v. Keller Rohrback LLP He is potentially damaging his chances in the NY civil case to avoid criminal implications.
From my understanding of a case like this, the AG will work from the bottom up and must have a lot of confidence in the evidence that Trump committed a crime, to bring him in. I am sure Trump and his lawyers understand that, so it makes sense to take the 5th. Trump is also very good at making himself the righteous, innocent, victim, against the whole evil justice system (evil because they hold him accountable for committing crimes). He can hold that public narrative and then enter the race and claim this is a political witch hunt.
The investigation went nowhere. He shouldn’t have answered the sex questions. I’m not vouching for his ethics or morals.
It is noteworthy that Trump's son and daughter both testified to this SA and did not take the 5th. If they were fully into the "deal" one would have to think they'd be taking the 5th as well.
The first words out of many in the Obama administration were "I plead the 5th" : Hillary Clinton’s former IT staffer pleaded the Fifth an astounding 125 times. Loretta Lynch is 'pleading the fifth' to dodge questions about $1.7 billion payments made by the United States to Iran At the first part of the hearing last May, Lerner delivered an opening statement declaring she had done nothing wrong, and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer any more questions. Cunningham, according to Issa, has repeatedly refused to testify before Congress about Fast and Furious. Now that he’s been subpoenaed and announced that he’ll plead the Fifth Amendment, this signals the first time an official in President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has refused to testify over Operation Fast and Furious on the basis that he or she may admit to committing a crime. In an increasingly familiar scene, a high-ranking former agency official went to Capitol Hill and pleaded the Fifth Amendment on Wednesday. This time, it was a former assistant secretary at the Department of Veteran Affairs who refused to testify to a House panel investigating a pair of agency conferences in Florida in 2011 criticized for lavish spending. His refusal to answer questions comes months after two other officials appeared before Congress and pleaded the Fifth Amendment in unrelated scandals. TDS still going strong.
Hillary Clinton’s former IT staffer pleaded the Fifth an astounding 125 times. Eric Trump in Jan, 2022, made that 125 times look paltry as he invoked the 5th over 500 times in his deposition about Trump Inc.
No problem with anyone pleading the 5th. It's a Constitutional right. The irony and hypocrisy of Donald Trump taking the 5th is his statement from 2016 that only mobsters and guilty people plead the 5th. And what did Donald do today? And how many times?
This is interesting, as Trump specifically said earlier today he plead the 5th to protect his family, who apparently didn't feel a similar need to protect themselves.
