The Fifth Amendment Talks

Following is a lightly edited transcript of The New York Sun’s interview with the Fifth Amendment:* * *FIFTH AMENDMENT: Hey, nice office. My quarters are above the bailbondsman’s on Court Street. We don’t even have windows.The SUN: Thanks, and thanks for coming in. I wanted to start by asking whether, in your wildest imagination, you ever expected that you might be invoked by a president of America.FIFTH: President Trump? What’s he looking at — double jeopardy or due process? I mean, I offer a lot of rights.SUN: It’s all over the Internet. Publication of the questions the Special Prosecutor wants to ask him has stirred up talk that if Mr. Trump is called before a Grand Jury, he might invoke your right to remain silent.FIFTH: I’d be happy to help him out.SUN: Supreme Court sage Jeffrey Toobin says you could end the standoff between the President and the Special Prosecutor. Another sage, though, Professor Dershowitz, says that if President Trump did invoke you, it would be a political catastrophe.FIFTH: I’m like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Bill of Rights. I get no respect. Nor does anyone who associates with me.SUN: Why is that?FIFTH: It’s a mystery to me. It seems to me that people instinctively understand the injustice of forcing a person to testify against himself in a criminal proceeding. The Supreme Court certainly understands; it has extended the right against self-incrimination to civil proceedings and even testimony before Congress.SUN: People think that anyone who invokes you must have something incriminating to hide.FIFTH: I’m the only right people are shamed for invoking. A person who demands the right to, say, pray, people think nothing of it. Or petition the government. Or to seek a trial by jury. No one would think you’ve got something to hide if you demanded bail. If you invoke me, though, it can weigh against you.SUN: Is that legal?FIFTH: It used to be specifically legal in California to hold a person’s silence against him. It was written right into its Constitution — until Edward Dean Griffin was put in the dock for murdering Essie Mae Hodson. Griffin refused to take the stand, upon which the prosecutor told the jury: “Essie Mae is dead; she can’t tell you her side of the story. The defendant won’t.”The jury up and convicted Eddie. I was there at the time. It felt terrible. Then, again, too, the Supreme Court reversed Griffin’s conviction, ruling that my testimony clause “forbids either comment by the prosecution on the accused’s silence or instructions by the court that such silence is evidence of guilt.”SUN: What does this mean for President Trump?FIFTH: It means people ought to get off his back about me. No reason for him not to plead the Fifth. I am a right. A right. I see where Supreme Court writer Jeffrey Toobin thinks the president will try to “short-circuit” Mr. Mueller’s effort to get him to testify by invoking me.SUN: Professor Dershowitz says that if the President did invoke you, the prosecutor would turn around and offer the President immunity.FIFTH: I saw that. Of all the sneaky maneuvers the courts have allowed, forcing persons to testify after they’ve been granted immunity is the most obnoxious. Imagine if you could be forced to give up your right to, say, pray if the government gave you immunity from prosecution.SUN: What about Professor Dershowitz’s point, that invoking you would be a disaster for the President because he would become a “a Fifth Amendment criminal”?FIFTH: I resent that kind of talk. Particularly because there was a time when the Leftists — I’m not saying Professor Dershowitz is one of them — loved me. When suspected communists were invoking me before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the noble comrades were all for it. Now that Mr. Trump is on the hook, not so much.SUN: Are you, or have you ever been, a communist yourself?FIFTH: I refuse to answer that question on my own authority.

The Fifth Amendment Talks

The Fifth Amendment Talks

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