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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 204 _ Filed 04/16/21 Page 127 of 239
lawsuit against the defendant or took her deposition years before the Government initiated its own
investigation. The defendant offers no evidence to the contrary, and there is no reason to believe,
on this record, that the Government in any way controlled Boies Schiller when it litigated a civil
case against the defendant. As such, the Fifth Amendment does not apply.
The defendant’s claim further fails because without coercion or compulsion, there is no
Fifth Amendment violation. See Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.S. 420, 431 (1984) (rejecting claim
that a “failure to inform [the defendant] of the Fifth Amendment privilege barred use of his
confession at trial”); United States v. Mitchell, 966 F.2d 92, 100 (2d Cir. 1992) (“Inculpatory
statements are not involuntary when they result from a desire to cooperate, or from a defendant’s
ignorance of, or inattention to, his right to remain silent.”); United States v. Mast, 735 F.2d 745,
750 (2d Cir. 1984) (same). The defendant implicitly argues that she only testified under oath in
the civil matter because she thought she would not be held to that oath. In other words, had she
known that she would be subject to the penalties of perjury, she would have invoked her Fifth
Amendment right. But the defendant’s misguided expectation that she would face no
consequences cannot be said to coerce speech. The defendant, represented by able counsel,
voluntarily chose to waive her Fifth Amendment rights and testify under oath. And she chose to
do so in connection with civil depositions that occurred over two years before the Government
opened its investigation. The circumstances surrounding that decision come nowhere near the type
of coercion that rises to the level of a Fifth Amendment violation. See, e.g., United States v. Ash,
464 F. Supp. 3d 621, 627-30 (S.D.N.Y. 2020) (finding suppression of defendant’s phone
unwarranted where defendant complied with former employer’s request to return the phone
because defendant was not coerced into doing so, and rejecting defendant’s argument that the
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Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00003061.jpg |
| File Size | 730.6 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.7% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,149 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 16:30:17.272448 |