Former President Donald Trump continues to admit very openly that he was involved in an “illegal” plan to reverse the election, conservative attorney George Conway said Saturday.
In a two-hour speech at the “Faith and Freedom” conference on Friday, Trump spoke at length about pressuring Mike Pence to turn down the electoral votes cast for Joe Biden on January 6, 2021.
“I said to Mike, ‘If you do this, you can be Thomas Jefferson,'” Trump told the crowd. “And when it was all over, I looked at him one day and I said, ‘Mike, I hate to say this, but you’re not Thomas Jefferson.'”
It was Trump’s first speech since a series of riveting hearings by the House select committee investigating last year’s insurgency.
“Let him keep talking from a prosecutor’s point of view,” Conway told MSNBC host Katie Phang. “Actually, he still admits that he put pressure on [former Vice President] Mike Pence for doing something that was completely illegal.”
“Someone should tell him that he has the right to remain silent and that anything he says in a court of law can and will be used against him,” added Conway, husband of former senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Trump also said he would “very, very seriously” consider pardoning suspects who stormed the Capitol if he is re-elected. That could be seen as an attempt at “witness manipulation” if he had that power now, Conway said.
That’s what he “did a few years ago…grace people,” Conway noted.
Trump also complained in his speech that those arrested after the uprising “have their lives completely destroyed and treated worse than terrorists and murderers”.
He called the violence at the Capitol a “simple protest” that got out of hand, and falsely claimed that “most” rioters were accused merely of “parade through the Capitol.”
According to the Justice Department, the defendants were actually charged with assault — including causing serious bodily harm to police officers — as well as destruction of property, theft, conspiracy, seditious conspiracy and trespassing. Rioters in the Capitol caused nearly $3 million in losses, including property damage, and about 140 police officers were injured in the violence. More than 840 people have been arrested.
Conway also discussed Trump’s “deliberate blindness” over the illegality of plans to undo legitimate presidential elections. “He understood, but he didn’t care,” Conway said.
Watch the full interview here:
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
