Kellyanne Conway appeared this week for questioning by investigators on the team of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is investigating any role Trump had in providing hush money to women with whom he allegedly had affairs, particularly Stormy Daniels, an adult film star.
The money that went to Daniels originated with former Trump ally-turned-repeated witness for prosecutors Michael Cohen, who himself later faced a criminal case that covered the illegality of what amounted to a large campaign contribution — well beyond the legal limits — in support of Trump’s 2016 bid for president. Such donations that are subject to federal rules don’t only take the form of money directly provided to a federal campaign. Cohen has said that he was in touch with Conway, who spent some time at the helm of Trump’s 2016 campaign for president, after sending the money for Daniels. An eventual criminal case could focus on what came next, including the falsified business records at the Trump Organization covering reimbursements for Cohen, which prosecutors could connect to potential violations of New York election laws.
“I called Trump to confirm that the transaction was completed, and the documentation all in place, but he didn’t take my call — obviously a very bad sign, in hindsight,” Cohen has written. He said Conway instead called him back and said she would provide the update to Trump. Conway could, then, provide prosecutors with information about what Trump may have been saying at the time, which could outline some of his personal involvement in the hush money and what came next. Trump himself has pointed to relevant statutes of limitations in trying to make his defense online, but does he really think something that foundational would just go unexamined in potentially building a criminal case against him? Others who’ve recently provided answers for investigators in Manhattan include Trump employees Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of former association with The National Enquirer, and former Daniels lawyer Keith Davidson.
Cohen himself, The New York Times said Wednesday, hadn’t yet provided grand jury testimony amid Bragg’s probe since a jury was newly impaneled, adding it was unclear the context in which Conway gave her answers, meaning whether before jurors or in an interview with prosecutors. Trump, meanwhile, also is facing the possibility of criminal charges amid the investigation in Georgia by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis into pro-Trump meddling after the 2020 presidential election and the probes at the Justice Department into both schemes after that election to keep him in power and his harboring of classified docs. He’s also soon facing a civil trial on claims from writer E. Jean Carroll over allegations he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and a civil case from the New York attorney general over allegations of deception in the finances at the Trump family company.
