The final score: Donald Trump 440, Vito Genovese 150.
That’s right, folks. In a court-ordered sworn deposition yesterday, the career grifter clammed up and took the Fifth 290 more times than Mafia murderer Genovese did during a 1958 Senate hearing.
Yes, I’m well aware that all citizens have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and not be compelled to make self-incriminating statements. But it sure looks bad when Don finds it convenient to outduel a mob don. It looks bad because Don himself has said so. Repeatedly. In 2016 he said that taking the Fifth is “horrible horrible…like you see in the mob, right? You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
But now that the New York attorney general’s office is weighing serious civil litigation, piling up documented evidence that the Trump Organization engaged in corrupt business practices, the architect of a coup against the Constitution has suddenly decided to embrace the Constitution. As Dean Martin sang, “ain’t that a kick in the head.”
After his 440 invocations yesterday, he put out a statement insisting that he had no choice when faced with “an unfounded politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media…The United States Constitution exists for this very purpose and I will utilize it to the fullest extent.” (He’s done that before. In 1990 divorce proceedings, while seeking to disengage from Marla Maples, he was asked repeatedly about marriage infidelity. He took the Fifth 97 times.)
Lots of people have taken the Fifth, some more sympathetic than others. Genovese was a bad guy. So was top mobster Frank Costello. So were the ’50s Teamsters thugs who took their cues from Jimmy Hoffa; during a Senate hearing, he’d waggle five fingers and yell at them, “Take Five!” So was Oliver North, who pleaded silence during Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal. So was GOP super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who took the Fifth in ’05 during a bribery scandal and was later jailed. So was Michael Flynn, who took the Fifth in ’17 early in the Trump-Kremlin probe.
On the other hand, you gotta love entertainer Zero Mostel, who took the Fifth when congressional commie-hunters tried to smear him as a Red. He even refused to name the studio he worked for. He said, “18th Century Fox!” The congressmen asked, “Do you want that statement to stand?” He replied, “Make that 19th Century Fox!”
In Trump’s case, it’s all about the hypocrisy – which, admittedly, given the guy’s toxic track record, is probably the equivalent of jaywalking. Nevertheless, it’s a thigh-slapping howler to hear him say, as he did yesterday, that he had “absolutely no choice” but to take the Fifth because – get this – the authorities in this country “have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency.”
Shrinks define psychological projection as “the mental process by which people attribute to others what is in their own minds.”
But here’s the beautiful thing: Even though taking the Fifth often protects the invoker pretty well in a criminal case – jurors aren’t allowed to interpret a defendant’s silence as a sign of guilt – there is far less protection in a civil case.
The New York attorney general’s office is weighing a civil lawsuit against Trump – potentially seeking huge financial penalties or even dissolution of the Trump Organization – and it just so happens that Trump’s decision to zip his lips could be held against him at trial. Civil case jurors are often permitted to take into account a defendant’s silence while assessing the evidence. They’re allowed to infer, if they choose, that such a defendant is hiding something. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that “the Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify in response to probative evidence offered against them.”
Granted, Trump has much bigger woes these days, what with the FBI, the DOJ, the Jan. 6 committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and a Georgia DA all in hot pursuit. But as he always used to say, clamming up makes a person look bad. At least he could’ve offered a creative excuse – like what mob kingpin Frank Costello told his inquisitors:
“I want to testify truthfully, but my mind don’t function.”