Shortly after federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York filed their sentencing memo for President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, the commander in chief took to Twitter to share his interpretation of what the document meant for him. “Totally clears the President,” Trump wrote. “Thank you!”
That was quite the curious conclusion of a document, which combined with one from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, “make clearer than ever before the case against President Trump,” as The New Yorker writes. The memo by federal prosecutors concluded Trump directed Cohen to commit campaign finance violations relating to payments to two women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. “During the campaign, Cohen played a central role in two similar schemes to purchase the rights to stories—each from women who claimed to have had an affair with Individual 1—so as to suppress the stories and thereby prevent them from influencing the election,” prosecutors wrote. As if that wasn’t clear enough, prosecutors wrote that Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual 1.” Prosecutors also said Trump directly approved Cohen’s plan to try to coordinate actions with the Russian government.
Enter George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway who has emerged as a strong critic of the president and decided to fact-check the president’s tweet. “Except for that little part where the US Attorney’s Office says that you directed and coordinated with Cohen to commit two felonies. Other than that, totally scot-free,” he wrote.
Conway’s tweet came mere days after Eric Trump publicly accused George Conway of disrespecting his wife and her career for publicly criticizing his father’s administration. “Of all the ugliness in politics, the utter disrespect George Conway shows toward his wife, her career, place of work, and everything she has fought SO hard to achieve, might top them all,” Eric Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “@KellyannePolls is great person and frankly his actions are horrible.”
But George Conway’s tweet also made clear that even if the presidential family dislikes him, he is gaining some unlikely admirers. “I never thought I would say this but am I looking at the new Mr. Griffin here?” wrote Kathy Griffin.
Conway was hardly alone and lots of other people on Twitter also mocked Trump for his tweet, many suggesting that Trump simply wasn’t told that he is “Individual 1.”
