George Conway 'Flattered' by Donald Trump and His Lawyers

George Conway, the conservative lawyer and anti-Trump political commentator, said on Friday that he was "kind of flattered" by the former president's lawyers claims that he influenced E. Jean Carroll to sue Donald Trump.

Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, is currently embroiled in a New York City civil defamation lawsuit brought by Carroll, a former columnist for Elle, in which she has accused him of attacking her character by denying her allegations that he sexually assaulted her during an encounter in the 1990s in a department store. In May, Trump was found liable for defaming Carroll in comments made in 2022 and was ordered to pay $5 million in damages. The trial that is currently ongoing is to determine the damages he will have to pay for comments made in 2019, when he was still president. Carroll is seeking at least $10 million. The former president maintains his innocence.

During the trial, Trump's legal team, including lawyer Alina Habba, have repeatedly attempted to put focus on Carroll's associations with public figures known to be highly critical of Trump, including the likes of his estranged niece, Mary Trump, and comedian Kathy Griffin. The argument they have tried to put forward is that Carroll was pushed into suing the former president by party's with an agenda against him, but it has so far not made any impression with Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case.

One of the figures that has been brought up frequently by Trump's legal team is Conway, who was previously married to Trump's former senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway. During a Friday evening appearance on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°, Conway detailed how he met Carroll shortly after she went public with her allegations against Trump and dismissed the notion that he had anything significant to do with her decision to sue.

Conway explained how he had, at the time, published a piece arguing that Carroll's allegations seemed credible and worth considering. He then claimed to have met her at a Manhattan cocktail party shortly after the publication of the piece, where she thanked him for the support and asked if he thought she should consider suing Trump, as she had heard suggested by others.

"And I said, 'yes,' I mean immediately, it took basically no thinking," Conway explained. "He's lying about you and that's a defamation."

Conway then said that he recommended a lawyer for the case, Roberta Kaplan, who did ultimately take the job. When pressed by host Anderson Cooper if it "matters in any legal sense who, if anyone, advised a plaintiff to file a lawsuit," Conway said "not at all," though he noted that it has not stopped Trump's team from bringing up his association with Carroll frequently.

"For some reason, Trump and his counsel seem obsessed with that fact and they brought it up consistently again and again in the first trial to the point where the judge had to tell them to stop," Conway said. "And then they're doing it again this week. I'm kind of flattered by it, but it's all just kind of bizarre, frankly."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's legal team via email for comment.