Innocent people don't refuse to testify on their own behalf.

[dpibel]

35. Let us all be precise

In point of fact, the OP made no "general assertion ... that silence is an indication of guilt." The subject line that has raised all the ire referred to testimony. Apropos your argument regarding non-litigation silence: If there is no proceeding, there can be no testimony or refusal to testify.

Note that your response in post #12 is couched entirely in terms of testimony in court. Although your post #19 broadens to "remaining silent as a sign of guilt," it's hard to separate that from your original post, which dealt entirely with criminal procedure, especially when you refer to lawyers having to confront the misperception. Other attorney-commenters in this thread also cast this in terms of protecting the right not to self-incriminate.

Hence, the appearance that you are applying criminal law analysis to the issue at hand.

Your discussion of President Obama is, I respectfully suggest, off point.

President Obama was never involved in a legal proceeding involving his birthplace or any of the other allegations that you list. In such situations, the best course frequently is, indeed, "I will not dignify that ridiculous claim with a response." No one has an obligation to respond to facially ridiculous claims. That said, I will remind you that, on the issue of birthplace, President Obama did ultimately produce his "long form" birth certificate. Frankly, if he had been asked about any of these allegations as part of a proceeding subject to compulsory process, I'm not at all sure dignified silence would have been the right course. But, unlike the case of Donald Trump, we'll never know, since President Obama failed to do anything during his term in office that merited any form of legal proceeding, civil or criminal.

But there is a third category.

In civil proceedings, you do not, in fact, have the option of keeping dignified silence in the face of calumny. You do not have the option of saying, "I will not dignify this with a response." You are free to do that in a standard lawsuit, of course. So long as you are prepared to have a default judgment entered against you. And you do not have the option of saying, once you've filed an answer, "I'd really rather not discuss it." You will discuss it, and you will produce any and all apposite documents, or you will suffer sanctions, up to and including judgment against you.

Of course you can, to your heart's content, take the Fifth during your deposition, and not a person in the world can stop you. Same with interrogatories. But once you do that, the plaintiff gets to go before the court and say, "I'm entitled to the inference that answering these questions would have harmed the defendant's case as follows..."

As I've said in another post in this thread, we're in somewhat uncharted territory as to whether the inferences available in a standard civil suit are available in an impeachment. Adam Schiff thinks they are, or at least that's what he's said during the hearings.

But one thing we can say for sure: Donald Trump has no Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer questions.

And that is the way this discussion has been cast by the various lawyers in this thread. And that is misleading, I believe, to lay readers.