The Democratic official who’s claiming that two members of the group Progress Kentucky were behind the recordings of a secret meeting between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and campaign aides said Thursday that he made the information public for the good of his party.
Jacob Conway, who sits on the executive committee of the Jefferson County, Ky. Democratic Party, told the public radio station WFPL that Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison of Progress Kentucky bragged to him about recording the meeting, which was held Feb. 2 at a newly opened McConnell campaign office in Louisville, Ky. In one of the recordings, which were obtained by Mother Jones, an aide to McConnell can be heard discussing Ashley Judd’s history with depression and how it might be exploited in next year’s campaign.
Shortly after WFPL broke the story on Thursday afternoon, Conway told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly that he didn’t want the actions by Reilly and Morrison to inflict damage on Democrats in Kentucky.
“The only reason that I came forward with what I knew was I was trying to protect the Democratic Party,” Conway said. “I believe in our party’s values, and I was doing what I thought was best for the party because I did not want their bad behavior, their poor mistakes — I shouldn’t say “bad behavior” — their mistakes, their lack of judgment to hurt our party’s efforts here in the state of Kentucky and in Jefferson County, here in Louisville.”
Conway added that he hasn’t heard from Reilly or Morrison since the story broke. Progress Kentucky found itself embroiled in another controversy involving McConnell in February, when the group fired off a series of tweets referencing the ethnicity of the GOP leader’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and her father’s connections to China.
