Kellyanne Conway
Kellyanne Conway was a Special Counselor to Trump from 2017 to 2020, after managing his 2016 presidential campaign, following Paul Manafort’s resignation. Conway famously used the phrase “alternative facts” to describe lies by the Trump administration boosting figures about the size of the crowd attending Trump’s inauguration. Among other controversies, as Trump’s “spin doctor,” she defended his embattled immigration ban by inventing a non-existent terrorist attack, called “the Bowling Green Massacre.” Such statements got her bounced from Morning Joe, where the host Joe Scarborough gave his candid opinion of Conway: she’s just “not credible anymore.”
In 2019, the Office of Special Counsel recommended that she be fired from the White House for engaging in “egregious, notorious and ongoing” violations of the Hatch Act, which prevents executive branch employees from using their official authority to influence an election. Both Conway and Trump rejected this recommendation. (Conway was also excoriated by Members of Congress for blatantly endorsing Ivanka Trump’s commercial products.)
From 1995 until 2017, Conway led her own polling firm, The Polling Company, where she conducted work over the years for prominent Republicans, anti-abortion groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society, and other groups tied to Supreme Court kingmaker Leonard Leo, including the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) In 2011-2012, per instructions from Leo, Conway used her firm to pay a six-figure sum to Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, from a secret donor Leo had arranged to fund the Judicial Education Project (JEP). When this transaction involving secret payments to the wife of a Supreme Court Justice was first reported in 2023, Conway claimed that she had paid Ginni as a consultant for advice about polling, even though Ginni had never run a polling firm–unlike Conway. JEP declined to comment when an investigative reporter from Politico asked whether that secret pay arrangement had continued.
Conway continued to sit as CEO of The Polling Company after entering the White House, which raised ethics concerns. Leo then secretly arranged for his BH Fund to finance a million dollar plus transaction to transfer Conway’s “The Polling Company” to Creative Response Concepts (CRC), “a powerhouse GOP PR firm” Leo became co-owner of in 2020, under the re-brand, CRC Advisors. At the time, Conway had been promoting Leo’s picks for Supreme Court nominees to Trump as Trump’s counselor. Politico described the machinations as “the latest example of how Leo has used his network to secure and protect allies at the highest levels of government to successfully advance his decadeslong agenda of shifting the Supreme Court rightward.”
Since leaving the Trump administration, Conway has launched her own consulting firm. FOX also recently announced a new namesake program she will host weekly until the election (she has intermittently been a cable news commentator since the 1990s). Conway also became chair of a program for Stephen Miller’s America First Policy Institute. After Conway’s “alternative facts” claim in 2017, the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF)–which has also received substantial funding from Leo and which backed his picks for the U.S. Supreme Court–named her its “Woman of Valor.” She previously served on IWF’s board and conducted polling for the group and its related (c)(4) group, the Independent Women’s Voice (IWV).
Other the years Conway has worked for numerous politicians, including Newt Gingrich, Dan Quayle, and U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, who notoriously claimed in 2012 that women’s bodies have a way of shutting down to prevent pregnancy from a “legitimate rape.” Akin lost, even though IWV ran robocalls trying to help him defeat Democrat Clare McCaskill.
More recently, Conway initially backed Ted Cruz for president before switching to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Conway chaired “Keep the Promise,” a PAC backing Cruz that was almost entirely funded by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who also backed Trump in 2016.
Conway also worked for Mike Pence. After the end of the Trump administration, she became an advisory board member for Pence’s non-profit, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), alongside other former White House officials such as Dave Bernhardt and Betsy DeVos. That group has its own ties to Leonard Leo, having received at least $1.5 million since 2020 from core Leo dark money group, JCN, which also goes by the name the Concord Fund.