George Conway, 59, declined to comment further on the news, first reported by the New York Post. Kellyanne Conway, 56, responded to a Washington Post reporter via text: “beware of false facts and assumptions.”
A veteran Republican pollster, Kellyanne Conway joined Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in July 2016 and was promoted to campaign manager two months later. After Trump was in the White House, he became one of the administration’s most public faces through frequent TV news appearances — including one in which he defended a Trump spokesman’s false claims to crowds of inauguration that breaks the record as “alternative facts.”
In 2001, she married George Conway, a prominent New York attorney who represented Paula Jones in her 1994 sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton. He initially supported Trump’s campaign and later considered getting a high-ranking job in the administration.
But he quickly became angry with the new president, and in March 2018 he launched a series of heated criticism against Trump on his Twitter account, which eventually gained more than a million followers. He has also taken on several prominent writing assignments, publishing a 3,473-word essay over the summer refuting Trump’s assertion that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation “is not constitution.” In an October 2019 Atlantic op-ed, he declared Trump unfit for office and questioned his mental health.
“I’m angry at the Never Trumpers for opposing him and not giving him a chance,” George Conway explained in February 2020. “But their predictions about him turned out to be very correct – in fact, maybe no one knew how bad he was.”
Eventually, George Conway helped found the Lincoln Project, a political action committee formed by moderate Republicans with the goal of blocking Trump’s 2020 reelection effort.
As public interest in their marriage grew, some speculated that their political position was a small act — a way for the Conways to build a professional bridge across the partisan divide in Washington. However, tensions are clearly starting to rise within the family, especially after Claudia, the couple’s teenage daughter, draws attention with viral tweets and TikToks critical of her parents and Trump.
In the summer of 2020, Kellyanne Conway said she will step down from her role in the White House, citing the needs of their children. Her husband at the same time left his job at the Lincoln Project.
“We don’t agree on much,” Kellyanne Conway wrote in a statement at the time, “but we agree on what matters most: the children.”
But in her memoir, “Here’s the Deal,” released in May, she revealed her anger and frustration at her husband’s decision to go public with his disdain for Trump.
“For the first time since George and I got serious, I looked at the possibility that the man who always had my back might one day stab me,” he wrote. “Is that impossible to imagine?”
He added: “I’ve said publicly what I’ve said privately to George: that his daily barrage of insults-by-tweets against my boss – or, as he sometimes puts it, ‘the man in the White House’ – violated our marriage vow to ‘love, honor, and cherish’ each other.” She wrote that as her husband’s social media following grew, “it seemed like the flood of reaction and attention he received was magnetic and irresistible.”
People who spoke to George Conway at the time said he was upset by what he wrote and that it added tension to an already rocky relationship.
After the first reports of the couple’s separation surfaced, Trump weighed in early Saturday morning on Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to Kellyanne Conway on her DIVORCE from her wacko husband, Mr. Kellyanne Conway. Finally free, he finally got the loathsome albatross off his neck. He was a great man, and now will be free to lead the kind of life he deserves…
“Looking forward to seeing you in New York at E. Jean’s trial next month! Hugs and kisses,” replied George Conway, referring to author E. Jean Carroll’s rape and defamation lawsuit against Trump that is set to go to trial in April.
