Former White House communications director I hope Hicks took position on Friday Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New Yorka tense reunion between the former president and a woman who was once one of his closest advisors.
“I’m very nervous,” Hicks said as she took the stand as the ninth witness to be called in the case, and led the jury through a dramatic inside account of Trump’s reaction to the infamous “Access Hollywood” that almost derailed his first presidential bid.
She later broke down in tears at the beginning of her questioning by Trump lawyer Emil Bove when he asked about the Trump family giving her the opportunity to work at their company, leading to a brief recess while she collected herself.
Hicks began working at the Trump Organization in 2014 before working on Trump’s 2016 campaign and then his administration. Another witness, former editor of the National Enquirer David Peckersaid she was in and out of an important meeting he had with Trump and his then-lawyer michael cohen in 2015, where Pecker agreed to help them suppress stories that could harm Trump’s campaign.
Cohen and Pecker are key figures in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. Prosecutors say the three men organized a scheme that resulted in Cohen paying an adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006. Trump later reimbursed Cohen for payments that the prosecutor says he falsely classified as legal expenses.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts of falsifying business records. He also denied having an affair with Daniels or another woman at the center of the case, former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Hicks said Friday that he has not spoken to Trump in nearly two years.
She told the jury that when she worked on the Trump campaign as press secretary starting in 2015, they would speak several times a day. Asked about the size of the press team, Hicks said, “It was just me and Mr. Trump” until the final stages of his successful tenure, and she praised his communications and branding skills.
“We were all just following his lead,” she said.
Asked if she was in and out of a meeting with Pecker, she said she didn’t remember, but that it was “possible.” She said she remembered Trump praising articles the Enquirer had done criticizing his then-Republican rivals Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz. She recalled that Trump called an article that tried to link Cruz’s father to the Kennedy assassination “great reporting.” Pecker testified that the play was a mixture.
She said the size of the team had increased in October 2016, when she received an email from a Washington Post reporter with an “extremely urgent request” to comment on what later became known as the “Access Hollywood” tape. The 2005 Hot Mic recording includes audio of Trump making lewd comments about women and saying he can grope them without their consent.
Hicks said she was “very concerned” about the email – both the content “and the lack of time to respond.” She said she forwarded the request to campaign leadership, including Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon and Jason Miller. She finally found them preparing for Trump’s debate with Hillary Clinton.
She said Trump asked her what was going on and she read the email aloud to him. She said she had a vague memory of beginning to read the transcript of her comments that the Post reporter had sent, and that Trump then read the rest to himself. “That doesn’t sound like something I would say,” she remembers him saying.
When they started talking about how to respond, Trump suggested the tape was no big deal and “wasn’t anything to get so upset about,” Hicks said, and called it a “pretty common thing for two guys” to talk about.
Hicks said she was “shocked” when she finally heard the tape and had a feeling it was going to be a “huge story” and a “crisis.”
The campaign released a brief statement from Trump calling the comments “locker room banter.” He later tweeted a video statement, where he said “I said that, I was wrong and I apologize,” before attacking Clinton.
Hicks said he later reached out to Cohen to ask about another potentially damaging tape. Hicks did not elaborate on that call before the jury, but previously told the House Judiciary Committee she asked Cohen to contact TMZ founder Harvey Levin about the existence of rumors of a tape involving Trump and Russian prostitutes.
The complaint was included in the call Steele Dossier – the obscene and largely unverified collection of Trump’s ties to Russia, assembled by a former British spy. She later said she confirmed that no such tape existed.
Hicks said another crisis arose just days before Election Day 2016, when the Wall Street Journal asked him for comment on a $150,000 hush-money agreement between Enquirer publisher AMI and McDougal. Hicks said she had never heard McDougal’s name before and reached out to Cohen, who she suspected was lying about not knowing anything about it. She then reached out to Pecker, who said McDougal was being paid for fitness columns and magazine covers and “it was all very legitimate.”
The Journal got on the phone and asked her about allegations that Trump also had a relationship with Daniels.
She said she worked with Trump and Cohen on a statement denying the allegations. The Journal quoted her as saying, “We are not aware of any of this” and that McDougal’s claim of an affair was “completely false.”
The story did not receive much attention from other mainstream media outlets, which she and Cohen noted in text messages shown to the jury.
Hicks said Trump was concerned about the impact the story might have on his wife, Melania, and asked that newspapers not be delivered to his residence on the day it was published. “I don’t think he wanted anyone in his family to feel hurt or embarrassed by anything that happened during the campaign. He wanted them to be proud of them,” Hicks said.
She said Daniels’ allegations came back to life in 2018, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep silent about her allegation of a sexual encounter in 2006. She said Trump later told her that Cohen had done this on his own. to protect Trump from false allegations and did not tell him about it. Hicks said she thought this would be completely awkward for Cohen.
“I didn’t know Michael was an especially charitable or altruistic person. He’s the kind of person who seeks credit,” she said.
Under questioning, Hicks said Cohen was not part of Trump’s presidential bid but would anger the team by trying to insert himself into the campaign. “He liked to call himself ‘fixer’ or ‘Mr. Fix it,’ and it was only because he broke it first that he could come and fix it,” she said.
As proceedings began on Friday, Judge Juan Merchan addressed an inaccurate statement Trump made outside the courtroom a day earlier.
In comments outside the courtroom on Thursday, Trump said: “I am not authorized to testify. I am under a gag order” and he said he would be appealing. “I am not authorized to testify because this judge, who is in complete conflict, has placed me under an unconstitutional gag order,” he reiterated.
Merchan said Friday that he refuted Trump’s claims. “It doesn’t prohibit you from taking a stance,” Merchan said. Commonly known as a “gag order,” the judge’s decision is actually called an order “restraining extrajudicial statements” – statements made outside of the courtroom.
“As the name of the order indicates, it only applies to extrajudicial statements,” Merchan said. Trump then muttered, “Thank you.”
Merchan earlier this week found Trump in criminal contempt and fined him $9,000 for violating that order with nine of his social media and campaign posts. Prosecutors argued Thursday that he should be charged with contempt for additional alleged violations. Merchan has not yet commented on the motion.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
