In bombshell testimony Friday, Hope Hicks relayed cascading concerns inside Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as a lewd tape and allegations that he had had affairs with a Playboy model and a porn star emerged in the waning days of the election.
A close aide to Trump who spoke daily with him, Hicks said Trump’s campaign feared the potential ramifications of the Access Hollywood tape on the pending election. She also testified that Trump did not want the newspaper delivered to his home on the day that a story about his alleged affair with Playboy playmate Karen McDougal was set to run.
The ninth witness in the trial, Hicks took the stand tentatively. “I’m really nervous,” she told the room, her blonde hair falling in soft layers around her shoulders.
Later, she began to cry as an attorney for the defense, Emil Bove, began to ask about her early years working for Trump on real estate at the Trump Organization.
Hicks reluctantly adds to the prosecution's narrative
A rapt jury hung on Hicks’s every word as she discussed the all-out effort to control a report so explosive that coverage of it pushed a category 4 hurricane out of the news. She said Trump’s small, close-knit campaign feared the potential ramifications of the Access Hollywood tape on his prospects in the election.
Hicks, who joined Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign after working for his real estate company, was a trusted off-again on-again advisor to Trump during his administration. She followed him to the White House where she took on a role handling communications, largely operating behind the scenes.
Hicks offered observations on Trump’s relationships with key employees at his real estate company and said she spoke daily with him. Crucially, she offered the court a clear recollection of many of the events and conversations that prosecutors have presented in their case against Trump, including with his one-time fixer Michael Cohen and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.
Earlier, Pecker had testified how Hicks was “in and out” of an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower with Trump and Cohen where the magazine publisher agreed to be “the eyes and ears of the campaign,” and where they discussed a plan to “catch-and-kill” potentially damaging stories.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the payments Cohen made. He has denied all charges.
Hicks testified to Trump having his hands on everything
Hicks echoed Pecker, who described Trump as a micromanager. Trump was “very involved” in the media strategy for the campaign, Hicks said. “He knew what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it; he deserves the credit for the different messages that the campaign focused on.”
It was a small team, and when Hicks, then the campaign spokeswoman, received an email from a reporter asking about the Access Hollywood tape, she recalled forwarding the request for comment to a close circle of advisers, some of whom remain with Trump today.
Denials
After learning of McDougal and Stormy Daniels — who said they had affairs with Trump and were paid to stay quiet — from a Wall Street Journal reporter who had reached out for comment, Hicks said she sought to “buy a little extra time” by having Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner call Rupert Murdoch, the paper’s publisher.
Ultimately, she issued a statement that denied awareness of any agreement between the National Enquirer and McDougal and that McDougal’s claim of an affair with Trump was “totally untrue.”
That Hicks include a specific denial about the affair came as a request from Trump, she said, and was told that “inklings of an affair were untrue.”
Hicks paints Cohen in an unflattering light
Hicks told the court that Trump told her about a conversation he had with Cohen after the New York Times reported that Cohen claimed he paid Daniels without Trump's knowledge.
Trump seemed to affirm that Cohen told him the same.
But Hicks, asked whether this seemed in line with the Cohen she knew, called Trump’s account into question.
“I did not know Michael to be an especially charitable or selfless person; he is a kind of person who seeks credit,” Hicks said.
She also attested to the fact that Cohen was not an employee of the campaign, and had acted independently, sometimes in ways she deemed problematic.
“He liked to call himself a ‘fixer’ or ‘Mr. Fix-it,’ but it was only because he had broken it in the first place,” Hicks said.
Merchan corrected Trump’s claim he can’t take the stand
On Thursday while talking to reporters outside the courtroom, Trump claimed that the gag order intended to stop him from disparaging witnesses in the press, also will prevent him from taking the stand. But that’s not true, Merchan said Friday.
“As the name of the order indicates,” it applies only to statements out of court, Merchan said, adding that Trump has the “absolute right” to testify.
Trump was fined $9,000 this week for violating the gag order, with Merchan warning that continuing to do so could force the judge to jail him.
Trump, in fundraising messages, has used the order to fuel his campaign and warned he could be thrown in jail as he tells his supporters he is being silenced.
Yet Merchan demurred when the prosecution asked about cross-examining Trump if he is to testify about his gag order violations.
