FORTUNATELY, THERE IS NO DEFENSE TO NOT OFFER:

Last week brought significant legal challenges to former president Donald Trump. First on Monday, the FBI executed a search warrant at his home at Mar-a-Lago, seizing classified documents he had removed from the White House. Then on Wednesday, sitting for a deposition in a civil investigation conducted by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Trump reportedly asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege to all 440 questions posed. While the two stories may not appear linked--one concerns a civil probe into Trump's businesses and the other a criminal investigation of Trump's post-White House handling of classified government documents--they are actually closely interrelated in a critical way. That is, Trump's need to invoke the Fifth Amendment in lieu of providing information in his own defense in a civil case tells us much about his future ability, or lack of same, to present a "lack of criminal intent" or "state of mind" defense to potential criminal charges.

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