Conservative attorney George Conway on Monday slammed Republicans for their defenses of Donald Trump against a potential criminal indictment in New York.
The former president said in a post on his social media site over the weekend that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday as part of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation of him. The probe relates to a 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, who was paid off days before the 2016 presidential election as she was allegedly on verge of going public about an affair she claims she had with Trump in 2006.
“The Republicans are behaving like complete disgraces,” said Conway, who is in the process of divorcing Trump’s former senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway. “By saying that Trump is being persecuted, they’re essentially saying you can’t touch Trump and Trump is above the law.”
“And whatever slack you might have wanted to cut a former president, that was gone after Jan. 6,” he added. “This man is a recidivist criminal. I mean, he’s committed fraud all of his life. He’s lied all of his life.”
Prominent Republicans have been quick to rush to Trump’s defense following his announcement. Several top members of the House of Representatives, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, characterized a potential indictment as politically motivated and an abuse of power.
“You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former President of the United States and current declared candidate for that office,” Republican Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), James Comer (Ky.) and Bryan Steil (Wis.), who chair the Judiciary, Oversight and House Administration committees, respectively, wrote in a letter to Bragg dated Monday.
Conway said the Republican defenses were “completely ridiculous” given the evidence. Republicans have sought to discredit the version of events presented by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, who was jailed in 2018 over his involvement in the hush money payments. Cohen has been cooperating with authorities in multiple investigations against Trump and says he facilitated the hush money payments at Trump’s behest.
“The notion that Cohen’s going to be discredited on it is ridiculous given the paper trail. We see the checks that were signed by Donald Trump,” Conway said. “It’s hard to say that he’s being picked on for paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star and concealing that and using a straw donor, which was Cohen, to do that and saying he’s being persecuted somehow when no one has ever done that.”