‘The mob takes the Fifth’: New video from anti-Trump group trolls ex-president over Jan 6 investigation

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A new ad from an anti-Trump group favoured among progressives and liberals on social media is swinging at the former president over the decision several witnesses summoned by the January 6 committee for testimony made to plead the Fifth.

The ad released by MeidasTouch on Friday was nearing 1 million views by Monday morning; the short video highlighted Donald Trump’s past criticism of those who chose to exercise their Fifth Amendment rights to not answer questions under oath, which Mr Trump has claimed is a right only exercised by guilty individuals.

The video shows Mr Trump telling a crowd: “The mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

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In another clip he is seen saying: “Have you seen what is going on in Congress? Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Fifth Amendment!”

And in a segment from one of the presidential debates against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Mr Trump says: “Taking the Fifth, I think it’s disgraceful.”

As noted in the advertisement, that same tactic has now been utilised dozens of times by allies of the former president including his ex-lawyer John Eastman, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, and InfoWars host Alex Jones in their interviews with lawmakers on the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.

Past videos from the group have been similarly popular in liberal circles on social media but have faced criticism from some more traditional Democratic strategists who argue the group’s content circles mostly in left-leaning circles on social media and rarely reaches independents or Republican voters.

Founded in the spring of 2020 by three brothers, the group is connected to Adam Parkhomenko, a former staffer on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and founder of the Draft Hillary movement which urged her to run before her unsuccessful White House bid in 2008.

Their advertisements were particularly active during the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent Senate runoff elections in the state of Georgia which occurred in January of 2021 amid Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his own election defeat months earlier. It was questioned, however, whether the advertisements were as effective in reaching Georgians as they were in reaching Democrats around the country (though national attention on the race certainly contributed to the victories of Jon Ossoff and Rev Raphael Warnock).

The group urged its followers to attack the magazine Rolling Stone last year after one of the publication’s political reporters dug in to the group’s finances and uncovered questionable practices that one expert said could potentially violate federal election law. In particular, the group was accused of paying one of its founders, Brett Meiselas, was operating as the group’s treasurer while simultaneously being paid as a consultant to a firm that is in turn consulting the Super PAC.

“The FEC has been derelict in enforcing them because the FEC is derelict in enforcing everything. But there are laws on the books that say you can’t do that,” said the Campaign Legal Center’s Adav Noti in an interview with Rolling Stone.