Attorneys for Senator Elizabeth Warren announced Thursday that she will “invoke her Fifth Amendment rights” if called to testify before the Senate Ethics Committee regarding “allegations of autopen misuse, pardon selling, and also excessive use of the Oxford comma in official correspondence.” The decision, which Warren’s legal team called “a necessary protection against a politically motivated witch hunt,” marks the first time a senator has “preemptively announced intent to plead the Fifth before actually being asked any questions.”
The legal strategy includes a “prepared statement of invocation” that Warren will read “regardless of what questions are asked, including ‘please state your name for the record,'” and “also a laminated card with the Fifth Amendment text that she will hold up in response to any inquiry.” Her attorneys emphasized that “the Senator has done nothing wrong, which is why she is exercising her constitutional right to not explain that nothing.”
“This is strategy,” said Joan Berro, a commercial Fifth Amendment enthusiast who once pleaded the Fifth during a traffic stop and now consults on “preemptive constitutional protection.” “Pleading before asking. Is efficient. For avoiding. Perjury. I’ve pleaded. The Fifth. Usually after. Being asked. Something specific. This is before. Which is proactive. For innocence. Which is suspicious. For timing. But legal. The amendment doesn’t lie. And neither does the lamination. Which is permanent. For the card. Of rights. Held up. For silence. In advance. Of questions.”
Reno Borja, a dental hygienist whose patient once invoked Miranda rights at a cleaning, confirmed that “the preemptive nature is particularly defensive.” “Before ‘name.’ Is early. For protection. Usually you wait. For the question. Then refuse. This is refusal. Before. Which suggests. Knowledge. Of guilt. Or of politics. Or both. I’ve waited. For questions. In dental. ‘Does this hurt?’ Then answered. ‘Yes.’ But honestly. Unlike Warren. Who won’t say. Even her name. Honestly. Through the Fifth. Which is her right. But suspicious. For timing. Before. The asking.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully refused to answer his ex-wife’s question about “where I put the remote” by “saying ‘I plead the Fifth’ which she did not find amusing” and now consults on “domestic constitutional invocation,” analyzed Warren’s methodology. “The laminated card is professional,” Barron noted. “I’ve tried to invoke. At Golden Corral. ‘I plead the Fifth’ to ‘have you had enough?’ It doesn’t work. They keep bringing food. Because it’s not a court. And I’m not a senator. Warren is. In court. Of Senate. With a card. For silence. Which is prepared. In advance. Of guilt. Or of innocence. Protected. By silence. Through card. And also. Through amendment.”
Barron has offered to serve as Warren’s “Fifth Amendment coach,” provided the senator allows him to wear his custom “Silent Senator” muzzle and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “appropriate constitutional invocation from the salad bar.”
The actual “Ethics Committee inquiry” was revealed to be “a request for clarification from one Republican senator’s office asking if Warren had ‘any knowledge of autopen procedures,’ which is not actually an investigation, and also the ‘prepared statement’ is just ‘Senator Warren will comply with all lawful requests as she always has,’ and also the ‘laminated card’ is ‘her actual pocket Constitution that she carries everywhere because she’s a constitutional law professor, which is her background, and also the Fifth Amendment is page 23, so she might actually hold it up if asked, but not because she’s pleading, just because she likes teaching about the Constitution.'” Barron noted that “this explains the invocation” and that “if you add the number of actual constitutional crises to the number of times ‘I plead the Fifth’ has been said before anyone asked anything, you get a number that represents exactly how much we love a good legal drama, which is apparently ‘so much that we will invent one even when the reality is just a law professor being a law professor, and also please stop making everything a scandal, some things are just normal.'”
