Washington (CNN) George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, said Friday that the degradation of the rule of law under President Donald Trump -- including attacks on the freedom of the press -- risked turning the US into a "banana republic."

The rule of law, Conway said, is "something we ought to be able to take for granted, but something, sadly, that we need to start talking and thinking about a lot more."

Conway is one of the founders of Checks and Balances, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who are critical of Trump's approach on legal and political institutions. The group was co-sponsoring a conference with the Georgetown University Law Center on the rule of law.

In his remarks, the conservative lawyer noted Trump's criticism of his own attorney general for allowing congressmen who supported him to be indicted for federal crimes.

"If people were to get indicted or not indicted on the basis of whether the President likes them, we wouldn't have a republic, we'd have a banana republic," Conway said.

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