By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com
A former Watergate prosecutor warned that President Trump would commit “political suicide” if he invokes his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the lawsuit filed by pornographic film star Stormy Daniels.
“He cannot take the Fifth Amendment,” Jill Wine-Banks said on MSNBC. “That would be political suicide.”
Her comments follow news that longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid depositions and disclosing sensitive information that could be used against him in the criminal investigation.
“Michael Cohen can take the Fifth Amendment,” Wine-Banks said. “But the president of the United States cannot say, ‘I can’t answer questions because they might incriminate me in another matter.’ That just is not politically acceptable.”
Daniels filed a lawsuit against Cohen to get out of a nondisclosure agreement i which Cohen said he paid her $130,000 to stay quiet about an affair she said she had with Trump.
Michael Cohen, the longtime personal attorney of President Trump, plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying in a lawsuit filed against the president by pornographic film star known as Stormy Daniels.
Cohen, whose office, hotel room and home were raided by the FBI earlier this month as part of a criminal investigation by prosecutors in New York City, cited the probe in a court filing in California, where the lawsuit was filed, the New York Times reports.
According to the filing, Cohen said if he’s called as witnesses in the lawsuit, “I will assert my 5th Amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the F.B.I. and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.”
Cohen said he paid Daniels $130,000, which she said was meant to keep her quiet about claims that she had an affair with Trump in 2006.
By invoking the Fifth Amendment, Cohen won’t be subjected to depositions and be forced to disclose sensitive information that could be used against him in the criminal investigation.
