(Dobbs) If You're Innocent, Why Are You Taking The Fifth Amendment?
Hypocrisy and dishonesty at a whole new level.
It used to be that taking the Fifth, which protects citizens from incriminating themselves during sworn testimony, seemed incriminating in and of itself. Even Donald Trump used to think so. “You see the mob takes the Fifth,” he famously said during his 2016 campaign for President, while talking about some of Hillary Clinton’s staffers who took the Fifth when questioned by Congress about the 2012 terrorist attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
Good question, Mr. Trump.
But that was then, this is now.
Having relied on the Fifth for his refusal today to answer questions during a deposition in New York, where the state’s attorney general is investigating the former president for corrupt business practices, he turned to the vindictive brew that is the Trump trademark. “When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.”
Just for good measure, he also has accused Letitia James, the attorney general, who is Black, of being a “racist.”
Maybe Trump takes his cues from his cronies, so many of whom have refused to answer questions under oath in courtrooms and in Congress. His former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn took the Fifth. His former campaign manager Paul Manafort took the Fifth. His former political strategist Roger Stone took the Fifth. His former senior counselor Steve Bannon took the Fifth. His former personal lawyer Michael Cohen took the Fifth. His former CFO at The Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, took the Fifth. His own son Eric Trump took the Fifth. For that matter, Donald Trump himself took the Fifth once before, to avoid answering questions about adultery during his divorce from his first wife Ivana.
All of which underscore that excellent question Trump asked back in 2016: “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
Of course hypocrisy isn’t an exclusive trait of Donald Trump, or of the party he has molded in his image. Nor is dishonesty. Democrats have shown more than their share of both, too. But this week, between the deposition in New York and the FBI’s probe of his home in Florida, Team Trump is taking them to new levels.
They call the search at Mar-a-Lago a “raid.” It wasn’t a raid. The FBI had to secure a search warrant, and to do that, they had to convince a federal judge that there was probable cause that a crime had been committed. What’s more, after verifying the warrant, the Secret Service let them in.
Trump’s attack dogs know that. But it didn’t keep them from chewing through their muzzles.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who once said “I’ve had it with this guy” but since then has gone all in for Trump, tweeted that Attorney General Merrick Garland, to whom the FBI reports, had better "preserve your documents and clear your calendar," because if the Republicans win the midterm elections in November, they’ll be coming after him.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley— the man who fist-pumped the insurrectionists on January 6th— called for Garland to be impeached.
Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon queen who in the past has denounced liberals who proposed to defund the police, tweeted, “DEFUND THE FBI.”
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis said that what took place at Mar-a-Lago is “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime's political opponents.”
Florida Senator Rick Scott, not to be out-hyperbolized, compared the FBI’s search to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.
On one of Ohio Representative Jim Jordan’s Twitter accounts, this fear-mongering comment: “If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you.”
From Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed election denier who just won her primary for Governor of Arizona, "This is one of the darkest days in American history: the day our Government, originally created by the People, turned against us. This illegitimate, corrupt Regime hates America.”
And those aren’t even the scariest. As a CNN Twitter analysis reported, “There was a surge in tweets Monday mentioning ‘civil war’ -- at some points more than one tweet a second.” On a Trump fan forum, one user wrote, “Lock and load.” Another said, “Kill all feds.” Yet another wrote that Attorney General Garland “needs to be assassinated.” A fourth posted a picture of the judge who approved the FBI’s search warrant and said, “I see a rope around his neck.”
And of course the former president himself had a few words to say about the FBI’s visit to Mar-a-Lago: “We are no better than a third world country, a banana republic.”
The only things we haven’t heard from almost any of these pliant politicians— including Trump— are castigation of these online threats, and condemnation of the insurrectionists he incited last year to overthrow our government.
No, we haven’t heard any of that. A search warrant and seizure of materials at Mar-a-Lago in connection with an alleged federal crime is going to destroy the Republic. But death threats, and the January 6th insurrection? Since the smoke cleared on that dangerous day, Republican politicians have called it “a false flag operation,” “a peaceful protest,” even “a normal tourist visit.” At the Conservative Political Action Conference just last week in Dallas, Georgia’s Representative Greene prayed for the welfare of the insurrectionists.
It’s a safe bet that sometime soon, Trump will take the Fifth again. Expect it if he’s indicted for the crime of allegedly violating the Presidential Records Act and taking sensitive documents, which belong to the federal government, to his private home at Mar-a-Lago. Expect it if he’s indicted for the crime of allegedly interfering with the 2020 election in Georgia. Expect it if he’s indicted for the crime of allegedly inciting the mob of insurrectionists, then negligently failing to try to disperse them, on January 6th, 2021.
We shouldn’t forget that it is his constitutional right to take the Fifth. But don’t forget this either: it is our right to read into it what we will.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Trump won’t take it again. After all, as the man himself once said, “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Am I to infer from your post that "Presumption" is no longer a part of our legal system? I will eagerly await the legal findings.
The king of the hypocritical double standard
He likely sold his soul to the devil decades ago and never had consequences for his actions
Maybe now?