In a criminal case, the Fifth Amendment protects a defendant from incriminating themself. The protections aren’t as strong in a civil case.
Former President Donald Trump might have kept himself out of jail by invoking his Fifth Amendment rights in testimony with New York Attorney General Letitia James, but some law experts predicted that the action doomed him in the civil case filed against him Wednesday morning.
James announced that she would sue Trump, some members of his family and Trump Organization executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney for allegedly enriching the Trump family over a 10-year period with fraud, misrepresentation and by inflating Trump’s net worth by billions to cheat lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements. During depositions in James’ investigation, Trump and some of his associates allegedly pleaded the Fifth « hundreds » of times, according to several reports.
Pleading the Fifth protects someone from incriminating themselves in a criminal trial, but the protections are murky in a civil trial. When someone invokes their Fifth Amendment rights in a criminal trial, a jury cannot infer guilt based on the defendant’s silence. However, inferences can be made against someone who invokes their Fifth Amendment rights in a civil trial.
Former federal Prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted that Trump and his son Eric have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights « hundreds of times.
