Kellyanne Conway says she made mistake in citing nonexistent terror attack to defend Trump's immigration ban
(Kellyanne Conway.Screenshot via MSNBC)
One of President Donald Trump's top White House advisers admitted Friday that she erred in referring to a terror attack that never happened in an MSNBC interview.
The adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said a "Bowling Green Massacre" in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was one of the catalysts for Trump's executive order temporarily barring entry to the US by nationals from seven majority-Muslim countries.
There was no such attack in the US.
During her interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Conway described two Iraqi refugees coming to the US, becoming radicalized, and masterminding an attack. Conway offered no evidence to back up her claims and flatly suggested that "most people don't know ... because it didn't get covered."
Conway clarified Friday morning that she was referring to an incident involving two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky. In that case, the two Iraqi nationals were indicted on federal terrorism charges in part accusing them of providing material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say 'Bowling Green terrorists' as reported here," she said, linking to a story about the incident.
An FBI press release in 2011 said the two men, Waad Ramadan Alwan, who was 30 at the time, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, who was 23, were former residents of Iraq who lived in Bowling Green at the time of their arrests. Both were convicted. In 2013, Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, while Hammadi received a life term, the FBI said.
According to the FBI's statement on the matter, there was no plan for a terrorist attack in that city.
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The Trump administration has used the threat of a terrorist attack in the US to justify banning travel to the US for 90 days by people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
The executive order introducing the travel ban, which also barred all refugees from entering the US for 120 days and indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the US, was widely criticized from Silicon Valley to the auto industry, major banks, the nation's top universities, leading GOP senators, and beyond.
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