Donald Trump can thank Kellyanne Conway’s husband for the lawsuit he will face regarding his allegedly sham foundation.
This week, a New York judge ruled that a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general is able to move forward after Trump’s team tried to cite the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution in claiming that a sitting president cannot be sued. But the judge refused to dismiss the case, citing the famous Clinton v. Jones ruling.
In that 1997 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court established that the sitting president of the United States does not have immunity from civil lawsuits for acts that took place before taking office. It also ruled that there is no temporary immunity, so cases need not be delayed until after a president leaves office. Clinton was being sued for sexual harassment by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who claimed she was harassed while Clinton was governor. The case would later expand to other alleged workplace relationships, most famously with Monica Lewinsky, and eventually led to charges of perjury against Clinton and impeachment.
As the New York Times reported in 1999, one of the lawyers who worked on the case against Bill Clinton was high-powered New York attorney George Conway — who also happens to be Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s husband.
How rich with irony: NY state judge cites SC ruling in Jones v Clinton (with briefs secretly written by ? @gtconway3d ?) as reason AG’s lawsuit against ? @realDonaldTrump ? and his foundation can proceed https://t.co/om88CYfR1X
— Michael Isikoff (@Isikoff) November 24, 2018
While his work nearly two decades ago has helped assure Trump will have to appear in court to defend his foundation, George Conway is also actively opposing the president in the present. He has helped to establish an organization of conservative lawyers who oppose Donald Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, and has not been shy in slamming the Trump administration.
In an appearance on the Yahoo News podcast Skullduggery , Conway said Trump turned the Republican Party into a “personality cult” and said he turned down an offer from Trump to work in the Justice Department’s civil division.
“I’m filling out the financial forms and it’s like — I forget what time of year it was, it was like late April — man, I’m thinking,” he said. “I’m watching this thing, and it’s like the administration is like a s***show in a dumpster fire. And I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do that. I don’t know.’”
The lawsuit now facing Donald Trump claims that the Trump Foundation violated both state and federal laws for the past decade. The suit claims that Trump used the foundation as something of a personal bank account, including using money to settle a lawsuit from the city of Palm Beach against his luxurious Mar-a-Lago resort.
