Right-wing dirty trickster Roger Stone apparently believes that revealing his age could open him up to criminal prosecution.
As flagged by CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, newly released transcripts of 34 January 6th Committee witnesses show that Stone invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when a questioner asked him how old he was.
"On the basis of the advice of counsel, I will yet again assert my Fifth Amendment rights to respectfully decline to answer your question," he said.
Stone gave a virtually identical answer when the interviewer asked Stone to list his address.
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These exchanges prompted the questioner to remark, "Mr. Stone I understand that you'll be asserting your Fifth Amendment right to each question we ask today."
The questioner then explained to Stone that the Fifth Amendment is only intended to protect witnesses who could incriminate themselves by telling the truth, and that he didn't need to plead the Fifth when asked non-incriminating questions.
"Do you understand that the Fifth Amendment protects your right to refuse to answer questions if the truth itself is incriminating?" the questioner asked.
"On the advice of counsel, I will yet again assert my right to decline to answer your question respectfully on the basis of the Fifth Amendment," Stone replied.
Donald Trump's desire to derail a possible 2024 presidential by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) led him to trash his adopted home state of Florida earlier this week which led a leading conservative columnist to suggest that is evidence the former president will stop at nothing to in his quest to get back into the Oval Office.
In his column for the National Review, senior writer Charles M. Cooke fired back at the former president and warned conservatives that if Trump is not stopped, he will cost them a shot at the presidency in 2024.
Getting right to the point, Cooke wrote, "Those on the American right who continue to doubt that Donald Trump will happily burn down anything that stands between himself and his desire to lose yet another election for the GOP would do well to note that, despite being engaged at present in nothing more consequential than a nascent shadow primary, he has already reached the point at which he is willing to sully the reputation of his home state of Florida in exchange for a mess of pottage."
Cooke's ire was aimed at the Florida bashing by Trump who wrote on Truth Social that Florida is "the worst in the Country” when it comes to “crime,” “Education, “Affordability,” and “COVID-19 Death," to which Cooke could only roll his eyes.
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Suggesting that it is "futile to begin debating facts" with Trump, Cooke made the case that, "There is a reason that 850 people per day now elect to move to Florida — a number that, in 2021, included a certain Donald J. Trump — and it is not that the state is an ignorant, crime-ridden, impossibly expensive hellhole. On the contrary: Life is pretty good here."
According to the columnist, there is no better time than now for Republicans to make a choice between the former resident who appears headed for another presidential loss of the future of the party that is being dragged down by him.
"if one cares solely about the cultish advancement of Donald Trump, it doesn’t especially matter that Trump is now criticizing precisely the sort of conservative governance that, at least in theory, he is promising that he’ll bring to Washington, D.C." he wrote. "If one cares about advancing conservative governance, however, it matters a great deal."
Addressing the fact that Trump chose to uproot himself and his family out of Manhattan to live at his Mar-a-Lago, Cooke wrote that is just more evidence of Trump's cynicism and deceit.
"As a rule, Americans do not move from places with 'out-of-control crime' to places with even more out-of-control crime, just as they do not choose to live in places with bad schools or move from cheap places to expensive places or get out of areas with stringent lockdowns to seek out the policies of 'a big Lockdown Governor on the China Virus.'" he wrote. "The notion is transparently, self-servingly, brazenly stupid — and all of us know it full well."
You can read more here.
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has reportedly agreed to settle a fraud case against him in the South American nation of Brazil that stemmed from an incident that occurred 15 years ago.
CNN is reporting that prosecutors in Brazil have accepted a deal with Santos' attorneys in which the New York congressman "would agree to formally confess" to using a stolen check book to buy hundreds of dollars worth of clothes at a store near Rio de Janeiro.
Additionally, reports CNN, Santos will be ordered to pay damages to the Brazilian store clerk who was fired from his job as a result of accepting Santos' fraudulent checks.
"The petition from Santos’ attorney, filed in January, requests a non-prosecutorial agreement in lieu of a trial for his client, arguing that Santos is now gainfully employed and 're-socialized,'" reports CNN. "The petition also requested permission for Santos to be contacted by the court via email or phone, and participate in the proceedings via videoconference."
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Committing fraud in Brazil is just one of the many scandals surrounding Santos.
Among other things, the New York Republican is facing accusations of allegedly sexually harassing an aide, stealing money from a disabled veteran that was intended to care for his dying service dog, and lying about nearly every single aspect of his work, academic, and family history.
Rejecting former President Donald Trump's claims of executive privilege, a federal judge has ordered Mark Meadows and other top aides from Trump's administration to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the lead up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, ABC News reported.
Trump's lawyers argued against the subpoenas, saying that executive privilege protected Trump's right to keep his communications during his time as president private.
Judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege for several former aides including Mark Meadows, John Ratcliffe, Robert O'Brien, Stephen Miller, and Dan Scavino. The order also included Nick Luna, John McEntee, and Ken Cuccinelli.
As ABC News points out, Trump is likely to appeal the ruling.
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"The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege," a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. "There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle."
Special counsel Jack Smith is investigating Trump for concealing more than 100 classified documents in his Florida home.
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