Judging Freedom - Trump Aide Granted Immunity Set to Testify

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Late last night, the Justice Department announced that a federal judge in Washington, D.C. has granted immunity to Keshe Patel. You might never have heard of Keshe Patel, but Mr. Patel was a senior advisor to President Donald Trump in his last year in office and has been largely assigned by President Trump a supervisory role over the issue of the removal of national defense information documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, their retention and their seclusion and their movement at Mar-a-Lago. When Mr. Patel was subpoenaed by the federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., investigating the former president's use of these documents after he left the White House,

Mr. Patel invoked the Fifth Amendment, a right that he has. I refuse to answer any of these questions on the grounds that my answers might tend to incriminate me. This right is protected by the Fifth Amendment. You've seen that in movies and on television and are probably generally familiar with it. By the way, you should always do that when the government summons you, unless your lawyers advise you that your answers are not going to hurt you. So the government then went to a federal judge and said, can you force him to testify? And the judge said, no, he's got a Fifth Amendment right like everybody else. Then the government used the government's nuclear option by giving him immunity. Now, immunity is not bilateral. He doesn't agree to accept immunity. When the

government gives you immunity, you have it, whether you want it or not. And that means you lose your Fifth Amendment rights. So the Fifth Amendment protects you from uttering words that might be used against you in a criminal prosecution. It doesn't protect you from all prosecution. It prevents the prosecutors from using your words against you in any prosecution. If you have immunity, then since they can't use your words against you in a prosecution because you're immune, you have no Fifth Amendment right. Therefore, you must answer the question. So Mr. Patel probably is not happy about this. President Trump cannot be happy about this. This is devastating to him to have his highest and senior most aid immunized and spilling his guts to the grand jury. That's where we are now. Now, we won't know what

happens before the grand jury unless we see Mr. Patel going to jail. Well, why would he go to jail? Well, now that he doesn't have the Fifth Amendment to protect him, if he still refuses to answer before a grand jury, a judge will hold him in contempt, the same judge that gave him immunity. If he still refuses to testify after being held York Times at the time, was in jail for 80 days for refusing to tell a grand jury information about a source of hers, a source that the grand jury already knew about and the feds already knew about from another witness. So this is terribly unfair, but it's devastating to President Trump. His senior most aide for this subject matter, the documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago, nearly all of which are now in the government's hands, either voluntarily returned or seized by the FBI. I say nearly because the feds claim that

former President Trump still has some of these documents. But the person who knows the most about them now does not have a Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify. And if he complies with the law, must testify and testify truthfully about and against his former boss, the former president of the United States. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.