Former President Donald Trump continues to very publicly admit he was involved in an “illegal” scheme to overturn the election, conservative attorney George Conway said Saturday.
In a two-hour speech on the “Faith and Freedom” conference on Friday, Trump talked at length about pressuring Mike Pence to reject electoral votes solid for Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I said to Mike, ‘Should you do that, you’ll be able to be Thomas Jefferson,’” Trump told the group. “After which after all of it went down, I checked out him at some point and I said, ‘Mike, I hate to say this, but you’re no Thomas Jefferson.’”
It was Trump’s first speech since a series of riveting hearings by the House select committee investigating last yr’s riot.
“From a prosecutor’s standpoint, let him keep talking,” Conway told host Katie Phang on MSNBC. “He principally continues to be admitting that he put pressure on [former Vice President] Mike Pence to do something that was completely illegal.”
“Any individual should tell him that he has the precise to stay silent and anything he says can and can be used against him in a court of law,” added Conway, husband of former Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Trump also said he would “very, very seriously” consider granting pardons to defendants who stormed the Capitol if he’s reelected. That might be seen as an attempt at “witness tampering” if he had that power now, said Conway.
That’s what he “did just a few years ago … dangling pardons to people,” Conway noted.
Trump also complained in his speech that those arrested after the riot are “having their lives totally destroyed and being treated worse than terrorists and murderers.”
He called the violence on the Capitol a “easy protest” that got out of hand, and falsely claimed that “most” rioters have been charged with nothing greater than “parading through the Capitol.”
Conway also discussed Trump’s “willful blindness” in regards to the illegality of scheming to overturn a legitimate presidential election. “He understood, but he didn’t care,” said Conway.
Try the complete interview here:
