Kellyanne Conway downplays Republicans gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics: "I don't want people to think that ethics is gone"

President-elect Donald Trump's incoming White House adviser has been spinning the GOP's pro-corruption stance

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published January 3, 2017 4:45PM (EST)

 (AP)
(AP)

Kellyanne Conway, the former campaign manager who will soon be a White House adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has been frenetically spinning Congressional Republicans' decision Monday to disempower the Office of Congressional Ethics.

"Let's make clear that you're still going to have an Office of Complaint Review. In other words, it's not like we're taking away everything," Conway said to "Good Morning America" anchor George Stephanopoulos. "Look, there's a very ambitious agenda to push forward. The Republicans have been given the majority in the House and the Senate, most of the governorships, they've won over 1,000 state legislative seats under President Obama's watch. So there's a mandate for them to make significant change."

Conway had a similar spin when she appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday morning

"The House Ethics Committee, which would oversee this, they have many mechanisms in place where you could effectuate the kind of hypothetical that you're putting forth," Conway said. "But I don't want people to think that ethics is gone."

This isn't the first time that Conway has defended Trump and the Republican Party for unethical behavior. After being confronted on Trump's unprecedented appointments of billionaires and other financial elites during a "Fox & Friends" appearance in December, Conway argued that there was a "refreshing departure." She added that "there is no quota for the number of tough-minded, accomplished people who are qualified to do these jobs" and went on to praise the generals that Trump has appointed, eliding questions about the appointments of billionaires and other wealthy corporatists with scads of conflicts of interest.

Trump's most recent high profile conflict of interest became apparent on New Year's Eve, when he attended a dinner seated next to Joseph “Joey No Socks” Cinque, a known associate of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway Office Of Congressional Ethics