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George Conway, husband of counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and noted conservative lawyer, on Thursday tweeted Federal Election Commission guidelines regarding personal gifts and loans under campaign finance rules.
https://t.co/bsZKAUJpu3 pic.twitter.com/xJgZXrvSuT
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) May 3, 2018
Conway’s tweet is relevant since President Trump tweeted that he repaid Michael Cohen $130,000 in hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels — a payment Trump had previously denied knowing anything about.
Trump sent the tweets after Rudy Giuliani, now a member of his legal team, appeared on Sean Hannity’s show, saying that the Daniels money was “funneled through a law firm, and then the president repaid it.”
Conway is a star conservative lawyer who represented Paula Jones in her lawsuit against then-President Bill Clinton, and who was under consideration for both the post of solicitor general in January 2017 and the role of head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in June 2017.
But more recently, Conway has been passive-aggressively offering up his opinion on the president’s legal problems on the president’s favorite platform (a special touch). Trump has consistently called the investigations of him a “witch hunt.” Conway, clearly, has a different opinion about the investigations and the quality of team Trump’s response.
On April 9, the FBI raided the home, office, and hotel room of Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen. The following day, when Trump tweeted “attorney-client privilege is dead!” (an angry response to reports that communications between Trump and Cohen were collected during the raid), Conway shared just a link to the Justice Department’s guidance on when searches can be conducted on attorneys.
The guidance explains that investigators can go all in, like the FBI did, when there’s reason to suspect the lawyer is acting unlawfully: “Consideration should be given to obtaining information from other sources or through the use of a subpoena, unless such efforts could compromise the criminal investigation or prosecution, or could result in the obstruction or destruction of evidence, or would otherwise be ineffective.”
https://t.co/uT1LETu3Oz https://t.co/KafkKu1jYB
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) April 10, 2018
And in response to Trump’s assertion that the FBI raid and Mueller’s investigation are a “witch hunt,” Conway retweeted a July 22, 1973, article titled “Nixon sees ‘Witch-Hunt’, Insiders Say.” In the article, a source tells Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that President Nixon and his top aides viewed the Watergate Senate hearings as “unfair” and “constitute a political witchhunt.”
Nixon resigned from office just over a year later, on August 9, 1974.
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) April 10, 2018
Conway isn’t saying that Trump is being ridiculous. He doesn’t have to. That’s the art of a subtweet.