September 30, 2016

Why Trump likes the Fifth Amendment even more than the Second

Huffington Post

height of his bitter divorce from his first wife, Donald Trump was carrying on a very public extramarital affair with a former beauty queen, Marla Maples.

As part of the couple’s divorce proceedings, Ivana Trump’s lawyers asked him under oath about his dealings with other women and whether he had been faithful to his wife.

Instead of answering, Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Over the course of five depositions that summer, he was asked approximately 100 questions related to marital infidelity. He pleaded the Fifth on 97 of them.

“Donald preaches about his devotion to the Second Amendment, but it was the Fifth Amendment that was his favorite when he was deposed in the divorce with Ivana,” wrote biographer Wayne Barrett in his 1992 book, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth. A New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement report later verified Barrett’s reporting on those depositions, which are still sealed.

For Trump, taking the Fifth seemed to work out well. He later bragged that he managed to settle the divorce without giving his first wife a penny more than required by the prenuptial agreement.


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