Trump pleading the Fifth will 'begin to cement' his legacy as 'the mob boss president': Former prosecutor

Former president Donald Trump has said that invoking the Fifth Amendment is something for "the mob" that makes people look "guilty as hell."

But former federal prosecutor Harry Litman told MSNBC on Saturday that he believes Trump will do just that when he is deposed by New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of her civil investigation into his company's business practices.

MSNBC host Yasmin Vossoughian read excerpts from Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron's ruling this week — which said Trump and two of his adult children, Ivanka and Don Jr., must sit for depositions in the case.

"He beat him (Trump) up very badly," Litman said of Engoron. "As George Conway puts it, Trump is quite an escape artist, but his escape routes are really unclear here. He can't play the delay game he's played with Congress. They've got him on a 21-day timeline. He will appeal, but he has no real legal claims to stand on. The intermediate New York court, and the highest court in New York, will have a chance to enter a stay — even perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court — but you have to expect them to make quick work of it."

Litman said if Trump takes the Fifth, "there will be unbelievable made-to-order commercials, because they'll juxtapose his taking the Fifth with his saying that only guilty people do."

"But second, in a trial, the judge will tell the jury they can have an adverse inference, unlike in a criminal trial," Litman said. "So the evidence will look like, everybody's saying inculpatory things, and then to add to it, the cherry on top, will be Trump and Ivanka and Don Jr. saying we take the Fifth, and the jury will assume they would have been saying something bad. The prospects for the civil trial itself are huge."

"His lawyer said that's what he was going to advise him to do," Litman added. "He would be in a world of hurt, even bigger, if he didn't. And what he'll do I think is he'll take it and then say, 'Well, that's for mob bosses. Here I'm just doing it because it's a crooked investigation, blah blah bah.' But it will begin to cement his reputation in history as the sort of mob boss president, and it will be a world of hurt in the civil case, and back to the criminal case, they can't use it against him, but it will be catnip to prosecutors."

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