George Conway: Trump ‘played Russian roulette with the law’

Attorney and prominent GOP Trump critic George Conway predicted Wednesday that the former president, who was indicted on more federal charges the day before, will have a difficult time overcoming the legal obstacles he faces in the coming year.

“I just don’t see how he survives all of these cases, Donald Trump, because each one — he’s played Russian roulette with the law, and I just don’t think he’s going to make it through the next year,” Conway said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Trump, who’s running for president again in 2024, was charged Tuesday with four criminal counts related to his efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. He is already facing a separate federal indictment over his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, as well as state charges in New York related to the 2016 hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results are also the focus of a Georgia investigation that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis launched shortly after a recording became public of a call Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to “find” votes in Trump’s favor.

Conway said it was good special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigations into Trump’s attempts to stay in power and his handling of documents found at Mar-a-Lago, focused solely on Trump in the indictment and that he is likely to go to trial before any case brought by Willis.

“It doesn’t appear that they have been coordinating closely at all, but what they’re trying to do, what they’re trying to prove is parallel,” he said. “I think that the strategic choice that Mr. Smith has made to just focus on Donald Trump is a very, very smart one.” 

“I think that’s good that his case will go to trial I think before hers because, by all accounts, she’s going to bring a much more organized-crime kind of case, involving the Georgia RICO statute that’s going to involve a lot of defendants and that makes life more difficult for a trial judge,” he added.

“But I think at the end of the day, what matters is you get two bites at the apple in this.”

—Updated at 12:45 p.m.