Question: Does the Bill of Rights protect citizens from government excess?  Nearly everyone will agree that it does.  The very reason we have a Bill of Rights is to protect you, the citizen, against abuses by government.

Next question: Can the government use the Bill of Rights as a shield in order to violate your constitutional rights?

Nearly everyone would say this is the opposite of what the Constitution is designed to do.  Yet, in practice, that is precisely what happens.  Here's how.

Government officials confidently commit crimes against you, against your nation, and against your Constitution.  Their confidence, their arrogance, really, stems in large part from the fact that, if and when their crimes come to light, they can hide behind the Fifth Amendment.  Perverting your right to be protected from them, they shield themselves behind your rights while violating your rights.

Is this not the definition of tyranny?

This perversion protects government officials from having to testify about their crimes – which, through them, become the crimes of government.  Thus, not only do they avoid punishment, but their immunity encourages further lawlessness by others in the halls of power.

Let's be clear.  If a government official is caught shoplifting, he should be afforded the full and complete protections of the Constitution.  Such a crime is not a crime of government, but that of a private citizen.

It is a completely different story, however, when the government official uses his office, his powers of government, to violate your rights, the very rights that government is sworn to protect.  In such a case, it cannot have been the intent of the Founders to protect the government against those whose rights the government abuses.

It should be crystal-clear that the government does not have the right to hide its crimes, nor to be shielded by a Constitution designed to protect citizens from governmental abuse.  It should be just as clear that every government official has an affirmative duty, an absolute duty, to uphold the Constitution.  This means that if a government official becomes aware of official crimes being committed against the American people, by government, then he must report it.  He must make it public, or at least as public as national security permits.

What seems less clear is whether the official has an affirmative duty to report governmental crimes that he himself commits.  But there is no unclarity.  The Constitution is not a suicide pact.  It does not protect the government by shielding it from any crimes committed by use of its authority.  Fifth Amendment protections do not protect the government, nor do they shield any office-holder acting under his governmental authority – because during the commission of that crime, he is the government.

The bottom line is that, when accused of an official crime, no government official has any rights under the Fifth Amendment to refuse to reveal all he knows about that crime.  If this amounts to self-incrimination, so be it; in such a case, the Constitution he abuses against his victims offers him no protection against self-incrimination.  None.  Instead, it protects his victims against him.  Any other conclusion is tyrannical.

Whether it be Lois Lerner, Peter Strzok, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder – the list is disappointingly long – every one of them is required to reveal every item of knowledge he has, in order to protect you against them. 

Every item.  Period.

This needs to be tested in the Supreme Court.  Indict one of them, require his truthful and complete testimony, and then let the appeals process begin.  If there is any hope for the future of our nation – if there is any hope of forestalling the accumulating forces of tyranny – the court will protect you, not the corrupt officials victimizing you.