Lawyer George Conway is lobbing criticism again at President Donald Trump, arguing in a scathing Washington Post op-ed Wednesday that the president has practically invited impeachment proceedings to begin.
In the opinion article, written with former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, Conway, the husband of presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, argued that Trump had provided “direct evidence of his contempt toward the most foundational precept of our democracy ― that no person, not even the president, is above the law.”
Conway and Katyal pointed to a brief Trump filed on Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that seeks to block a House Oversight Committee subpoena of his financial records from his accounting firm, Mazars USA.
Within the brief, Trump’s legal team contends that Congress is not allowed to investigate a sitting president except potentially through an impeachment proceeding.
According to Conway and Katyal, it’s an invitation to do just that.
“It’s a spectacularly anti-constitutional brief, and anyone who harbors such attitudes toward our Constitution’s architecture is not fit for office,” they wrote. “Trump’s brief is nothing if not an invitation to commencing impeachment proceedings that, for reasons set out in the Mueller report, should have already commenced.”
In May, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta upheld the subpoena for eight years’ worth of Trump’s records from Mazars USA. The president’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow warned an appeal was on the way, Politico reported.
At the time, Trump blasted Mehta’s decision as “totally wrong” and “ridiculous,” reminding reporters that the judge was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Despite Trump’s attempts to resist the subpoena, Conway and Katyal suggested his brief sounded less like that of a democratically elected leader and more like that of an absolute ruler.
“England’s King George III was above the law, but the founders of our republic wanted a system that would divide power and have the branches check each other,” they wrote. “The idea that only the president can investigate the president is an argument for autocrats, not Americans.”