George Conway made waves within the legal community and among the public on Monday (December 3) when he cited a clause in the U.S. Code to suggest that a tweet President Trump published in praise of Roger Stone may have violated obstruction of justice and witness tampering laws.
As the New York Times reports in its coverage of the morning’s developments – after updating his followers on relations with China and making brief mention of political gridlock over the U.S.-Mexico border wall – the President took aim at his former lawyer Michael Cohen for cooperating in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Trump accused Cohen of lying in the interest of getting any prison time he could be facing for unrelated crimes reduced. He then went on to characterize Mueller as “a much different man than people think” – but not before taking a moment to use his Twitter platform to celebrate Stone for pledging loyalty to his President in the midst of his name being swept up in the probe.
“Nice to know that some people still have ‘guts!’” Trump wrote in regards to Stone telling ABC This Week‘s George Stephanopoulos: “There’s no circumstance under which I would testify against the president because I’d have to bear false witness against him. I’d have to make things up. And I’m not going to do that.”
President Trump’s remarks came one week after Cohen confessed to lying under oath about the duration of time he spent on negotiations to bring a Trump Tower to Moscow. Per NBC News, Cohen was forced to admit guilt after the government obtained emails that revealed he had still been in communication with a Russian developer four months after the January 2016 date he initially claimed to have concluded the Trump Organization dealings. The turncoat lawyer would also tell congress that he kept President Trump updated on the negotiations throughout the early half of his presidential campaign.
Troubled by the way he posed the juxtaposition between Cohen and Stone, Conway retweeted the President with a caption that read simply, “File under “18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512.”
According to Law and Crime, 18 U.S.C. § 1503 is a law against attempts to forcefully “influence, intimidate, or impede any grand or petit juror, or officer in or of any court of the United States, or officer who may be serving at any examination or other proceeding before any United States magistrate judge or other committing magistrate, in the discharge of his duty.”
Conway’s tweet would draw the attention of a number of legal experts, including national security lawyer Bradley P. Moss and former Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal – who went so far as to say “Trump is genuinely melting down, and no good lawyer can represent him under these circumstances.”
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