It was unhinged, even by Trumpworld standards.
In the dying days of the Donald’s administration, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked the Justice Department to investigate a bizarre conspiracy theory that an Italian defense contractor somehow swung the election to Joe Biden.
Emails between Meadows and the DOJ were uncovered over the weekend. And there’s likely to be more to come. This is only “tip of the iceberg of all the crazy stuff that went on this winter,” George Conway tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “These guys were doing some wild, wild stuff. And it wasn’t just the campaign and the kooky campaign hangers-on, and the lawyers who were working on the campaign, like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. This stuff was going on in the White House.”
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Crazier than the stuff Meadows was pushing? Is that even possible? The conspiracy—thoroughly debunked—posited that Barack Obama took “one of the pallets of cash that was sent to the Iranians as part of the Iranian nuclear deal and gave it to some Italians,” Conway says. “And the Italians used the money to create some software that they downloaded into American voting systems by satellite, that switched votes from Trump to Biden. This is the chief of staff of the White House pushing his theory on the Justice Department.”
And Conway—who was a leading Republican lawyer for decades—wonders “whether there weren’t some illegalities in all of this” conspiracy-peddling.
“You’re running close to sedition here, trying to get government officials to act in support of a conspiracy theory to overturn the results of an election. I mean, there could be a criminal conspiracy involved there. That’s not protected by free speech,” he says.
Conway adds, “Maybe the Justice Department will move on up from the people, the 500-600 people who were at the Capitol [on Jan. 6] to other things. Like who organized the rally, and who at the White House was communicating with those people, and what else those people were doing at the White House to try to keep Trump in office. And I think all of these things relate at a certain level and ought to be fully investigated.”
Plus! Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel talks about the militia movement, which has become so alarmingly potent in her state. And Dallas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith describes the reaction to her instantly viral speech against Texas’ new anti-abortion law. “You can’t tell on the recording, but there were cheers starting about halfway through the speech and they just kept going up until the end, which is when you start hearing them on the video.”
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