“The Government presenting a person asserting their Fifth Amendment privilege in order to imply to the public that the person is ‘guilty’ of some crime is a McCarthy-esque tactic that offends the Constitution and is unworthy of the United States Congress,” 1st Amendment Praetorian’s lawyer wrote. Given the Committee’s past actions, McAdoo Gordon noted in her Thursday letter that she is “forced to anticipate that the Committee will use the same totalitarian tactic to improperly smear 1AP.” //

Quoting from the Supreme Court, McAdoo Gordon then reminded the committee that the high court has described the Fifth Amendment privilege thusly:

[W]e have emphasized that one of the Fifth Amendment’s “basic functions . . . is to protect innocent men . . . `who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.'”

The letter continued:

“The circumstances in which an innocent citizen finds himself faced with an out-of-control prosecutor, or a mistaken theory of criminality, or an overzealous legislative inquiry — which is the situation 1AP finds itself in — is precisely when the citizen most needs the protection of the Fifth Amendment. For the Congress to attempt to turn that protection into a weapon against a citizen, or a group of citizens, is repellant. I urge the Committee not to engage in such un-American behaviors. Unfortunately, I have little faith that the Committee will heed my appeal. This leaves me with no choice but to pre-emptively speak publicly about these issues before the Committee engages in wholesale defamation of 1AP from its powerful national platform.” //

“And now Congressman Raskin is telling the Times he plans to ‘explore the connection between those groups and the people in Mr. Trump’s orbit.’”

That is precisely what the First Amendment protects Americans from: being investigated because of the individuals with whom they associate. But not only does the Jan. 6 Committee not care, neither does the legacy media. The question remains whether Americans will, or whether they have lost their sense of decency.