George Conway Says Trump's Lawyers Are Making 'Deceptive Arguments,' 'Treating Senate Like They're Morons' In Rare TV Appearance

Conservative attorney George Conway, who's also the husband of Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, appeared on CNN Wednesday to discuss the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump from a legal viewpoint. Conway, one of the president's loudest online critics, said he believed that Trump's legal team were making "deceptive arguments" in the president's defense.

Conway also said he felt like the president's lawyers were treating the Senate and the American people like "morons."

In Conway's view, the ongoing impeachment proceedings against Trump should not center around whether he was legally allowed to withhold funds from Ukraine, but why the withholding occurred in the first place.

"If he did it for a legitimate reason," Conway said, "like if all of a sudden Ukraine switched sides and became a Russian satellite, well then yeah, absolutely. If they're not going to fight the Russians, then why would you be giving them aid? That would be a perfectly legitimate reason to say I'm going to hold withhold this money."

"But that isn't what happened here," Conway continued. "[Trump] just cut it off without any reason 91 minutes after he made this outrageous demand of President Zelenzkiy. And that's the difference. The depths to which Trump's lawyers will go to make these deceptive arguments, I mean they're treating the American public, they're treating the Senate like they're morons. It's just outrageous."

Conway went on to call the Senate impeachment trial a moment of reckoning "not just for the country and the rule of law and the Constitution."

"It's a very specific day of reckoning for the Republican senators who took this oath and the Republican party generally," he said. "Are they going to stand for lies instead of truth? Are they going to stand for gaslighting instead of reality? Are they going to just do the bidding of this one man and put his interests over those of the country? That's what this is about."

With no new witnesses called to testify during the trial, Conway said the "whole notion of procedural unfairness is just bogus."

"It's akin to a grand jury," he explained. "Nobody gets to come in and present their case to a grand jury. You get that opportunity at the trial. That's where we are today and now they're saying, 'We don't want the other side to present evidence.'"

"I mean, this is just a sham," Conway added. "This is just outrageous that the Republicans think they can play this game. Republicans in the Senate are under oath! They take a special oath to render impartial justice."

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Conway also said there was no real comparison between the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and the impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

"[Clinton] lied under oath but it was in a civil case that had nothing to do with the powers of his office," Conway said. " And it didn't involve abuse of presidential power. It didn't involve holding hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to an ally at war just because [Trump] wanted to get a foreign country to announce a bogus investigation against his leading political rival. It should be a no brainer here."

Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vehemently stood against calling for witnesses to testify in Trump's trial, but has opted to allow a vote on the matter after both sides have made their opening statements. While talk of a witness trade has surfaced, such as having former vice president Joe Biden testify if former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Bolton testifies, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said that would probably not happen.

"I think that's off the table," Schumer said to reporters Wednesday. "First of all, the Republicans have the right to bring in any witness they want. They haven't wanted to."

Trump's impeachment trial is expected to carry over into next week as legal teams for both Republicans and Democrats present their opening statements.