Conway: 'I don't know' what Trump knew about Bannon domestic violence charges

Donald Trump's campaign manager declined to say Friday whether the candidate was aware of past domestic-violence charges against campaign CEO Stephen Bannon.

"I don't know what he was aware of with respect to a 20-year-old claim where the charges were dropped. So that's all I know about is what I read," Kellyanne Conway told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "Good Morning America." Both Conway and Bannon were at the center of a Trump campaign shakeup last week, with Conway elevated from chief pollster and Bannon taking a leave of absence from running Breitbart News.


POLITICO reported Thursday night on a January 1996 police report (and subsequent court documents) in which Bannon's then-wife claimed that he grabbed at her neck and wrist during a financial dispute, with an officer stating that he saw red marks on her neck and wrist. According to the report, Bannon also smashed the phone when she attempted to contact the police.

But the case ended when Bannon's ex-wife did not appear in court, and the charges were dropped shortly before the two divorced in August 1996. Asked about the case, Bannon's spokeswoman told POLITICO: "The bottom line is he has a great relationship with the twins, he has a great relationship with the ex-wife, he still supports them."

According to a separate report in the New York Post, quoting from the couple's divorce papers, Bannon's ex-wife claimed that he had told her, "if I wasn’t in town they couldn’t serve me and I wouldn’t have to go to court."

"He also told me that if I went to court he and his attorney would make sure that I would be the one who was guilty," the Post reported her saying in the documents. "I was told that I could go anywhere in the world.”

The divorce papers were subsequently reported on by The New York Times, which spoke with Bannon's defense lawyer in the case, Steven Mandell.

Mandell told the Times that he had not pressured Bannon's ex-wife to skip his trial: “It’s possible that Steve Bannon said that to her, but I did not."