Conway: Hillary Clinton ‘one of the only people’ who believes in Russia collusion

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Friday that “the goal posts have been moved” when it comes to proving cooperation between the campaign of President Donald Trump and the Russian government.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Conway said, is among a handful of people still clinging to theories of collusion.


“I mean, we were promised systemic, hard evidence of systemic, sustained, furtive collusion that not only interfered with our election process but indeed dictated the electoral outcome,” Conway said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” “And one of the only people who says that seriously these days is still Hillary Clinton and nobody believes it. We know why she lost. It's obvious.”

Conway’s assertion that collusion allegations amount to little more than a conspiracy theory comes days after news broke that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., met last summer with a Russian attorney who had had been led to believe possessed incriminating information about Clinton sourced from the Kremlin. Trump Jr. admitted to taking the meeting, which was also attended by then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and top adviser Jared Kushner, but said no useful information came of it.

The meeting contradicts months of assertions from President Donald Trump’s team that nobody from his campaign had coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to hinder Clinton’s campaign and aid Trump’s. But Conway, who managed Trump’s campaign through its final few months, said Friday that she was never short of opposition research on Clinton and did not need to seek it out from any unscrupulous source.

“You know, when I needed negative information about Hillary Clinton, I didn't have to go very far. I looked at Hillary Clinton. She was a treasure trove,” she said. “She was like a treasure box of negative Hillary information with arms and legs.”

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Conway conceded a point the president himself had made earlier in the week, that campaigns are often on the receiving end of offers of opposition research, although she seemed to suggest that she would turn down such offers. “Many meetings end up as a bust that aren't particularly meaningful, consequential or helpful,” she said.

Coverage of Trump Jr.’s meeting, as well as general coverage of the ongoing investigations into Russia’s campaign of election interference, has shifted media attention away from ongoing work at the White House, Conway said, depriving Americans of news on what the Trump administration is working on to improve their lives.

“So, again, what kind of money are we going to spend by the taxpayers having these infinite investigations, and there are many of them. If we’re going to do that, fine, I suppose,” she said. “But we really need to spend our time, also, telling people what's being done here for them.”

