Attorney George Conway said a new report claiming President Donald Trump tried to squash AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner would “unquestionably” be grounds for impeachment, if true.
Conway, the husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, was referring to a New Yorker report that said Trump demanded that Gary Cohn, at the time director of the National Economic Council, ordered the Justice Department to block the merger.
Trump’s push to block the $85.4 billion deal was seen by some as retaliation against CNN, the network he’s repeatedly slammed as “fake news,” The New Yorker reported.
The magazine also noted that the president had called Cohn and then-chief of staff John Kelly into the Oval Office and griped: “I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened! I’ve mentioned it 50 times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”
Cohn, however, considered it improper and warned Kelly not to intervene, the report said.
Conway also retweeted two messages that pointed out Cohn appears to have blocked Trump from intervening:
The Justice Department did ultimately sue to block the merger in November 2017. A federal judge ruled in favor of the merger last summer. The Justice Department appealed, but lost again.
Despite his wife’s role in the administration, Conway has been a constant Trump critic, often using Twitter to slam the president and his utter disregard for the rule of law.