It was always a goal of the SEC to get a witness to admit that he was “taking the Fifth” on the record when he was refusing to answer their questions; it could be used later as an inference of guilt. If you were innocent, the thinking went, why wouldn’t you use the opportunity to tell the SEC all about it? White collar defense attorneys were well aware of this, of course, so it was their job to resist and try to avoid letting the client say that he was “taking the Fifth,” even when he was taking the Fifth, for precisely the same reason. It was standard legal maneuvering.
