Martha Stewart was a classic example of a Perjury Trap, they couldn’t tie her to insider trading or any of the financial crimes they were going after her, but they got her for answering “no” to a question to the investigators when asked if she had received a phone a call from a certain investment broker. The thing is, the broker had left a voice mail, so she may very well have answered truthfully having never listened to the message. But she did “receive” a phone call and the fact she said “no” was enough to charge and convict her on that alone.
I don't totally agree with McCarthy on this. I do agree that there is such a thing as a "perjury trap," but this term has been defined so broadly that it covers things that really aren't relevant. In the case of Stewart, she was obligated to testify truthfully because she was being questioned about a potential crime. That's not a trap. Neither was it a "perjury trap" when Bill Clinton sat his ass down in front of a grand jury back in the 1990s and lied his ass off.
To me, a "perjury trap" is when a prosecutor or investigating body interrogates a witness in a matter where there isn't even an underlying crime to investigate. That is what makes the whole Mueller-Russia debacle nothing more than a perjury trap for most of the people involved. The evidence of this is that almost every indictment of U.S. citizens by his team involves allegations of lying to the FBI about matters that aren't even criminal in nature.
I have been on the receiving end of a very small version of what Martha Stewart went through. When you are accused of something you are at first feeling shock as to what people are saying about you. You naturally pause trying to figure out what the hell is happening. Do you say something or do you stay quiet? You know that you are going to look guilty no matter what you do or say. But that pause caused by the shock of what is being said about you is what does people in. It makes you appear as if you have something to hide and that you are indeed guilty. All Martha could do was call a lawyer.
George Carlin said it best about Martha Stewart ..
“Boy, I feel a lot safer now that she’s behind bars. O.J. Simpson and Kobe Bryant are still walking around; Osama Bin Laden too, but they take the one woman in America willing to cook, clean, and work in the yard, and haul her a** off to jail.”