Nice try, Roger Stone!
Roger Stone showed up today for his scheduled testimony to the January 6th Committee. But his lawyers have already told the media that Stone intends to invoke the Fifth Amendment in response to every question. If this ends up being the case, all we can say is, nice try!
There are a whole lot of observers on social media who think that the Fifth Amendment is some sort of magic wand that can be waved in order to make consequences simply go away. But in reality that’s far from the case.
For one thing, you can’t just plead the fifth in response to every single question you’re asked, because some of the questions will be about topics where you couldn’t possibly be afraid that your answer will be used against you by prosecutors. So if Stone really does decide to take an approach this dumb, then the committee can still refer him for criminal contempt.
On the other hand, if Stone decides to plead the fifth to just the specific questions that could reasonably incriminate him, then he won’t get himself referred for contempt. But in such case he’ll be drawing a roadmap for the DOJ to dig deeper into the specific areas that Stone didn’t want to talk about – thus increasing the odds that he ends up indicted for underlying January 6th crimes.
It’s more important than ever to keep in mind that there simply are no magic wands available to Donald Trump’s people when it comes to the January 6th Committee. Executive privilege isn’t a magic wand, as we’ve seen. Pleading the fifth isn’t a magic wand, as Stone is about to find out. Lying to the committee isn’t a magic wand, because that just invites perjury charges. The only way out for any of these folks is to cooperate and flip on everyone. We’ll see which one of them has the brains to flip first.
