George Conway says an insanity defense is Donald Trump's best shot against a possible indictment in New York, but that he'll never use it
- George Conway says an insanity defense might be Trump's best shot in New York.
- Conway was weighing in on a series of incoherent Truth Social rants Trump posted on Sunday.
Conservative lawyer and pundit George Conway says former President Donald Trump's best shot against a possible indictment in New York is pleading insanity.
Conway was responding on Twitter to screenshots of one of Trump's Truth Social rants on Sunday.
"Are the coup-attempter's lawyers intending to use these posts as their proof in an insanity defense?" HuffPost correspondent S.V. Dáte tweeted.
"It really is his best defense, but he'd never assert it," Conway responded.
In the Truth Social post Dáte and Conway were referring to, Trump baselessly accused adult film actress Stormy Daniels, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and President Joe Biden of running an anti-Trump "disinformation" campaign.
On Sunday, Trump wrote nine posts on Truth Social, five of which were written in all-caps. The posts alternated between incoherent arguments about Bragg's investigation in New York and rants about Biden. They also contained a slew of unsubstantiated and baseless claims about Bragg.
Conway told Insider on Sunday that from a legal perspective, even an insanity defense won't help Trump get off the hook in New York.
Bragg is currently investigating if Trump's payments to Daniels were an illegal campaign expense, and if they violate New York election and document laws. Trump may be indicted in New York after the grand jury hears testimony from its final witness.
Conway and Trump have had a tense relationship. Conway was married to Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump aide, for 22 years. The two announced their split earlier this month.
When they split, Trump congratulated Kellyanne Conway for getting divorced "from her wacko husband, Mr. Kellyanne Conway."
George Conway, now a vocal Trump critic, said last week that we will likely see three Trump indictments. The first, he said, is from Bragg's investigation into Trump's possible role in hush-money payments to Daniels in 2016. The second is the Justice Department's investigation into whether Trump mishandled top-secret documents and brought classified files to Mar-a-Lago. The third is an investigation in Georgia into whether Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Conway told Insider that he thinks the Mar-a-Lago case is the simplest, "factually and legally," and will have the highest probability of landing Trump in prison.
Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and claimed he never paid her $130,000 to buy her silence before the 2016 election.
Conway isn't the first person to suggest that Trump could plead insanity to criminal charges. In October, former DOJ official Neal Katyal said Trump's 14-page response to the January 6 Capitol riot panel's intention to subpoena him looked like the makings of an insanity defense.
"I can't see it in any legal way helping him unless he is trying to go for the insanity defense, of which this paper seems, you know, to be some evidence of," Katyal told the MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart at the time.
Katyal and a spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.