Conservative attorney George Conway, who’s also the husband of Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, on Wednesday afternoon accused Melania Trump of “amplifying” an insignificant reference after the first lady lashed out at an impeachment witness for invoking the name of her teenage son.

Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan, a witness for House Democrats, earlier today mentioned President Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron Trump, during her impeachment testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

“The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron,” Karlan said.

In response, Melania Trump quickly condemned the witness for making a joke involving her 13-year-old son. “A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics,” the first lady tweeted. “Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.”

Although Karlan later apologized following further backlash from the White House and supporters of the president, Conway took to Twitter to criticize the first lady for focussing on an allegedly insignificant reference. “So therefore you’re amplifying what was a nothingburger reference a hundred-thousand-fold. Got it,” he tweeted.

The first lady’s remarks on Wednesday was the first time she had addressed the ongoing impeachment inquiry into her husband publicly. White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham also rebuked Karlan in a tweet, where she called the professor’s reference a “classless move.”

“Prof Karlan uses a teenage boy who has nothing to do with this joke of a hearing (and deserves privacy) as a punchline. And what’s worse, it’s met by laughter in the hearing room,” Grisham added. “What is being done to this country is no laughing matter.”

Amid the GOP backlash, Karlan apologized for mentioning the president’s youngest son during her testimony and admitted it was “wrong.”

“I wish the president would apologize, obviously, for the things he’s done that’s wrong, but I do regret having said that,” she said.

Vice President Mike Pence also called out Karlan’s reference. “The impeachment hearings today reached a new low,” he said. “I just heard at the hearing today, one of the Democrats’ witnesses actually used the President and first lady’s 13-year-old son to justify their partisan impeachment. Democrats should be ashamed. Enough is enough.”

The impeachment inquiry, announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in late September, was sparked by an official whistleblower’s complaint that accused the president of pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to probe the family of former Vice President Joe Biden. Karlan and three other legal scholars on Wednesday publicly testified before the House Committee. Republicans have repeatedly dismissed the Democrat-led process as “baseless” and “highly partisan.”

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