18 February—Is anyone at all surprised that Josh Koskoff hasn’t bothered to tell me if he and his firm litigated the Sandy Hook-Remington travesty pro bono? So I’ll assume it wasn’t pro bono. If you have nothing better to do, by the way, you might want to go to the Connecticut Judicial Branch website, https://civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/CaseDetail/PublicCaseDetail.aspx?DocketNo=UWYCV146051174S, and have a look at a Koskoff fee case that’s been going on for nine years. It’s about a contested fee for a big malpractice win. And Josh wasn’t involved.

Getting on, but staying in court, then, it appears that big daddy Donald Trump and two of the little Trumps have been ordered by the New York State Supreme Court, which is essentially like Connecticut’s Superior Court, to answer questions under oath in that state’s civil investigation into his and/or their famously questionable business practices that should really be the subject a criminal investigation.

The ordered depositions are likely to be appealed to the Court of Appeals, which is New York’s highest court. Bookies are probably laying odds on whether the Trumps will cop the Fifth to avoid incriminating themselves, because anything they say in a civil deposition can be used against them in the criminal investigation being conducted by the New York County—Manhattan—district attorney.

(That’s sports betting, so it should now be legal in Connecticut and making the Indians and General Fund richer.)

The Supreme Court has ruled that, since the Fifth Amendment was intended to protect the innocent more than the guilty, even an innocent person can cop the Fifth if an answer would provide a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute him for a crime.”

So we’re not supposed to infer that a person who stands on his Fifth Amendment right is guilty just because he keeps schtum. Yeah, right. Tell that to a judge, jury, and the man in the street. But why even worry about it? Why not simply lie?

Sure, lying under oath is perjury and perjury is punishable by fine and/or imprisonment in the United States. But first they’ve got to prove it. Everybody does it and lots of skillful or just plain lucky liars get away with it. Ever hear of testilying? It’s often done by police and suborned or otherwise encouraged by prosecutors to convict criminals or innocent people they want to convict as criminals. Or just to protect the police and prosecutors. Shame on me for even suggesting that.

To be fair, testilying is also done by criminals and innocent links in criminal chains and suborned or otherwise encouraged by defense lawyers. Because unless there’s some way of proving it’s testilying, after all, it must be assumed it’s truthful testifying. The whole truth and nothing but the truth, as it were.

So when the Trumps depone their little hearts out, assuming they don’t cop the Fifth, should we believe what they say? After all, it’s well known in certain circles that the family that cops the Fifth together stays together . . .