A prominent lawyer and Trump critic says former prosecutors are laying groundwork for a reckoning President Donald Trump's Justice Department won't deliver.
George Conway told host Molly Jong-Fast on Friday's episode of "Fast Politics" that private groups of former prosecutors and investigators are organizing to assemble case files on corruption tied to Trump's orbit, giving future prosecutors a head start once the Justice Department is rebuilt.
"I know that there's somebody, there are people trying to form groups or organizations that are gonna get together," Conway said. "These are private groups that are gonna get together, professional ex-prosecutors and investigators."
Those groups "won't have subpoena power," he acknowledged, but they can put together case files "based upon these news stories and based on gumshoe work...so that people, when we have real prosecutors someday, back on the job, they'll have something to work with and get started on."
Conway's comments came during a discussion of recent reporting in The Wall Street Journal on Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump's ambassador to Greece and prominent ally. As Jong-Fast described it, The Journal reported that Guilfoyle sent a Republican donor wiring instructions for her American Express card because she owed $100,000 ahead of her Senate confirmation.
"If we had a real justice department at this moment, there'd be a massive investigation of Kimberly Guilfoyle," Conway said.
He stressed he wasn't accusing her of a crime.
"I don't know whether she did anything, frankly, that was illegal. It certainly was sleazy," he said.
Conway compared the situation to the downfall of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose clients came to feel they "didn't get our money's worth."
"And that triggered, that was part of a big, big investigation and he ultimately went to jail," Conway said, adding that probes often begin when someone who paid for access feels cheated, as the donor in the Guilfoyle story has since made clear in a string of media appearances.
Conway warned the problem reaches far beyond Guilfoyle, pointing to figures from both Trump terms collecting money from foreign governments and from companies hoping to curry favor with the Trump administration.
"There's just a lot of money sloshing around," he said. "We're gonna be finding out stuff like this for years."
Any offenses uncovered "could be federal offenses, but they could also be state law offenses," he added. "They could also be offenses under foreign law."