The Fifth Amendment protects an individual against self-incrimination. The lawyer for John Eastman, the author of the ‘coup memo,’ said that his client plans to plead the Fifth Amendment with the January 6 committee, and that’s something former President Donald Trump has railed against in the past. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment,” Trump said as a candidate in 2016, complaining about aides of Hillary Clinton’s, who faced inquires over the use of a private email service during her time as secretary of state.
“You see, the mob takes the Fifth,” Trump said during a campaign stop in Iowa in 2017. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
Well, Eastman, the attorney who helped former President Donald Trump pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election, is taking the Fifth, according to Politico.
“Dr. Eastman hereby asserts his Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against himself in response to your subpoena,” his attorney, Charles Burnham, wrote in a letter to Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) dated December 1, according to the outlet.
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“Members of this very Committee have openly spoken of making criminal referrals to the Department of Justice and described the Committee’s work in terms of determining “guilt or innocence,” Burnham continued. “Dr. Eastman has a more than reasonable fear that any statements he makes pursuant to this subpoena will be used in an attempt to mount a criminal investigation against him.”
The coup memo, which was unearthed in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, outlined in nine steps how Mike Pence can overturn the 2020 election to give Trump the presidency after he lost the election to Joe Biden in the electoral and popular vote.
Let’s roll the tape!
With all of Trump’s bloviating about the Fifth, unlike the former president, Hillary Clinton was put under oath and grilled for eleven hours, and she didn’t break a sweat. And yet, now we have Eastman, a conservative lawyer, outlining in a two-page memo to try to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the Constitution and throw out the 2020 election results on January 6. In Trump’s previous line of thinking, that’s very mob-like.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
