White House counselor Kellyanne Conway dismissed testimony from the first two witnesses to appear publicly in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, saying there was “nothing new” and that the revelations that emerged on Wednesday would not hold up in a “real court of law.”
“There was nothing new yesterday,” Conway told CNN Thursday morning.
William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified that one of his staffers overheard a phone call between Trump and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland in which the president asked about “the investigations.”{mosads}
Taylor testified that Sondland said Trump “cares more about the investigations of Biden” than Ukraine.
The president in an earlier phone call with Ukraine’s leader had asked for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, which is at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
The information in Taylor’s testimony had not been known prior to Wednesday.
“You’re calling that evidence? Respectfully, in a real court of law, we would not be referring to something as evidence. That is, somebody on my staff recalled overhearing a conversation between someone else and the president where they think they heard the president use the word ‘investigations,’ ” Conway said.
“This is not what due process and the rule of law and our great democracy allows,” she added.
Conway also told CNN the president reacted “pretty well” to the hearing.
Taylor testified alongside George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of State, in the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry into Trump.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on Wednesday that Trump was not watching the impeachment hearings.