If Clark answers the committee’s questions by pleading the Fifth Amendment, the panel will likely have to stop the process of holding him in criminal contempt. If Clark continues to stonewall the committee, and invoke the Fifth Amendment in ways the committee deems illegitimate, the panel will proceed with a floor vote as soon as next week.
But
“You can’t plead the Fifth to an entire prosecution. You can’t plead the Fifth to every question you might be asked. So it applies only when you have a specific and reasonable apprehension that your answer could be used against you in a criminal prosecution,” Raskin said.
So, I suspect that he will show up and stonewall pleading the 5th as much as possible, giving up fundamentally inconsequential information. Which is what I predicted Meadows ‘cooperation’ would amount to as well. However, if they let anything slip that reflect poorly (if not criminally) on Trump, the CFSG may throw them under the bus, at which point they may decide to cut a deal. We can only hope.
Are you sure that it’s allowed to plead the 5th selectively? I always thought that you have to plead the 5th to ALL questions or NONE. At least, in court trials. I’ve assumed that’s true here too.
Do I have some ignorance here that needs fighting?
Would any pocket pardon that Trump signed still be legally valid? I mean, it’s been almost a year since he left office. Wouldn’t his ability to pardon people (even preemptively) no longer be valid? I would think it would have expired the second he was no longer POTUS.
OK, now I’m wondering too. I’d always thought, like claiming privilege, the 5th had to be invoked piecemeal, in response to each question whose answer might incriminate the person asked. But I can’t seem to find backup via google-fu.
I haven’t seen the same cases or Dramas you guys have, but I suspect it’s because if you talk for some points, but not for others, it makes you look baaaaaad in front of a jury. Sure, the jury isn’t allowed to make judgements based on your 5th Amendment claims, but it probably is percolating back in their minds.
While no means comprehensive, I found this short summary good to work with:
It touches on the points mentioned in other threads, such as pardons or immunity waiving 5th A protections.
Not all questions would tend to incriminate, so no, you don’t have to claim it to all questions. However, I do believe that within the topics you claim privilege you have to be consistent.
See Mark W. Williams, Pleading the Fifth in Civil Cases, 20 LITIG., Spring 1994, at 32 (“A witness is not permitted to decide on his own when to stop testifying once he begins. The choice must be made at the beginning whether or not to invoke the privilege.”).
A pardon remains valid indefinitely. For practical reasons, most are revealed, and known about, right away. There’s nothing in the law to prevent someone from receiving a pardon and then not revealing it until he or she wanted to, though.
Whether the President can pardon himself is a longstanding legal question which has never been definitively answered. The Constitution doesn’t say he can’t, although I think the Framers would be spinning in their graves if someone ever did. If I were Trump (and thank God I’m not), I would have pardoned myself for all Federal offenses since I was born, and signed it on my very last day in office, taking care to have a couple of trusted witnesses watch me (then swearing them to secrecy) and to use the White House correspondence date-stamp, to confirm that I’d signed it while I was still President.
But (a) I don’t think he’d be that clever, and (b) I’m sure he would’ve blurted out the fact that he’d pardoned himself within days if not hours of having done so. That’s just who he is.
Yeah, but he doesn’t think he did anything wrong, and he likely really believed/believes that he’ll be installed as President sometime in the next two weeks or so.
I think there is consciousness of guilt, but I also think that he believes he’s above the rules. I think he would provide himself with the cover of a pardon just in case the worst happened (and someone made him follow the rules).
“As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms. Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions,” she wrote in November 2016. “Thank you respecting that Amendment.”
…and no one has intentions worse than my crazy-ass offspring.
