Process Crimes

In this installment of  "don't talk to police," we visit the recent arrest of Roger Stone. In similar fashion to a handful of others linked to the Trump campaign, Stone was arrested by the Mueller Witch Hunt Team for making false statements to investigators.

It's the Process
These arrests have all been deemed "process charges" by the real news media.  The #FakeNews asks the illogical question "what are they covering up with their lies." Of course, this question is disingenuous. The question presumes there is guilt of anything. 

Suppose a line of questioning went something like this:
Agent: "What color shirt did you wear on Tuesday, January 16, 2018?"

Witness: "A purple shirt."

Agent: "That's a lie! We have video of you wearing a purple shirt with green stripes!"

In the Mueller Witch Hunt, statements as innocuous as these have been the only crimes discovered since the Trump campaign. Of course, one fellow committed crimes 10 years before the campaign. All irrelevant to the issue at hand, supposed "Russian Collusion."

Law Enforcement are trained
LEO are trained to get you to lie or incriminate yourself somehow. If your testimony is deemed unbelievable, and you also say "I did nothing wrong," then the "logical" conclusion is that you actually did something wrong. 

LEO can lie to you in an effort to coerce an answer. Even if you give a conditional answer, if it contradicts something else you've said - even just a little bit - you've lied to an investigator and that's a crime. 

Details - regardless of how small - that don't match up 100%, are deemed to be lies. Like the purple shirt example above.  Again, lying to an investigator is a crime. 

The 5th Amendment
The right to not self-incriminate is absolutely huge! Many will generalize: "if your answer would self-incriminate, then you *must* be guilty of something! This is not accurate at all. If the answer given could possibly be the only crime (an inaccurate statement, for example), then refusing to answer would be to avoid committing a crime!

Note to the savvy reader: the 5th Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights because Britain was forcing people to answer questions.  Refusal to answer was punishable under law.  And even in the 1700's, LEO were using the same traps to get people to make statements that didnt match 100%. There's nothing new under the sun.

Lessons learned:
Don't talk to police.
Don't talk to any law enforcement officials.
Statements should only be made with counsel present.
We have a 5th Amendment (for now, anyways), use it. "At the advice of counsel, I am invoking my right to not answer."
There is no law that requires you to remember something.  The answer "I do not fully recall" is a perfectly valid and complete answer. 
The right to not self-incriminate is not limited to crimes in the past, it also includes potential future "crimes" such as accidental inaccuracies in testimony.
What you think is an inaccuracy and what LEO will describe as an inaccuracy are two different things.