Who is former Trump adviser Hope Hicks to testify in New York hush money case?

Washington (CNN) — Hope Hicks, a former longtime trusted adviser in Donald Trump’s inner circle, will testify in the hush money trial in New York this Friday after being subpoenaed.

“I’m very nervous,” Hicks said, looking toward the jury. After taking the stand, she looked quite uncomfortable.
As CNN previously reported, Hicks appeared before a grand jury last year before Trump was indicted, as did Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Hicks was Trump’s press secretary during the campaign and could shed light on what was happening inside the political campaign in the final weeks before the 2016 election, when Cohen says she was forced to keep quiet about an alleged affair. Trump was concerned about the money being paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Could jeopardize his presidential campaign. Trump allegedly made payments to Cohen after taking office and has since been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the true nature of those payments. The former president pleaded innocent and denied the relationship.

Hicks has a long shared history with Trump, beginning when she worked in communications for the Trump Organization and during Trump’s presidency, Hicks was one of the first staffers to join his 2016 campaign for the White House. Became communications director and was one of the longest-serving advisers in the White House, often marked by a series of angry departures.

She thrived in an environment where loyalty was paramount, consistently defending Trump amid criticism, and the president earning her the nickname “Hopi.”

Hicks’ closeness to Trump has occasionally put him in the media spotlight.

She testified in 2018 before the House Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in the 2016 election and acknowledged that she sometimes had to tell white lies on Trump’s behalf, according to a source with direct knowledge of her testimony.

After facing scrutiny over both her testimony and her relationship with Rob Porter, Trump’s former staff secretary accused of domestic abuse, Hicks decided to leave the White House to work as communications chief at Fox News. Porter denied the allegations and resigned.

Hicks returned to the White House in March 2020, before Trump’s re-election, but was criticized for not believing that the election was stolen, according to several books published about the final months in the Trump White House.

As reported in “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021”, Trump is quoted as saying, “Well, Hope doesn’t trust me.”

According to the book, Hicks responded, “No, I don’t think so.” “No one has convinced me otherwise.”

In October 2022, Hicks testified before the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

In a video played by the commission, Hicks testified about a conversation she had with Trump after the election regarding unfounded claims of voter fraud.

“I became concerned that … we were damaging his legacy,” he told the commission.

He testified that Trump “said something like, you know, ‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose, so it won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning,'” Hicks said in the video.

Politico reported in March that Hicks was running a small communications consultancy with various international clients, including fashion retailer Shein.

An attorney for Hicks did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Daniels suspected of involvement in payment

The crux of the current case against Trump centers on an alleged scheme to falsify company records to conceal a $130,000 payment made to Daniels to buy her silence. Cohen previously said that Trump directed him to make the payments “for the primary purpose of influencing the election.”

Cohen said he paid Daniels himself. Prosecutors say Cohen later met with Trump in the Oval Office to plot how Trump would pay him through a series of false invoices for legal services.

Trump has said he is not aware of any payment to Daniels.

Trump has tweeted that Cohen received a separate monthly retainer from the campaign. During jury selection at his trial, he said, “I was paying a lawyer and I wrote it off as a legal expense, some accountant, I didn’t know, wrote it off as a legal expense, it That’s exactly what it was, and they blame you. “Why?” he said.

Federal search warrants issued in 2019 revealed that prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York found that there was a mad scramble within the Trump campaign to do damage control and press additional allegations of a sexual nature, which Were not even installed. The public disrupted Trump’s campaign in October 2016 after the “Access Hollywood” tape came to light.

The day after the tape came out, Hicks called Cohen and Trump joined in, according to the documents. From there, Cohen, acting as mediator, engaged in at least 10 phone calls that day, some with Trump or Hicks and others with American Media Inc. executives David Pecker and Dylan Howard. At the time, AMI owned the National Enquirer tabloid.

According to FBI officials, some of those conversations were about Daniels, an adult film actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, according to the documents, but the documents do not disclose the content of the calls.

According to the affidavit supporting the court order, Cohen spoke with Hicks at least twice that day, including just before and after speaking with AMI officials.

In a footnote in the warrant affidavit, an FBI agent wrote that Hicks told another FBI agent that, as he recalled, he first learned of the allegations made by Daniels a month later in November.

Hicks told CNN that the conversation with Cohen in early October was related to the “Access Hollywood” film.

“He was clearly motivated to do something that I had no knowledge of,” Hicks said. “There is nothing contradictory in what I have said.”

Prosecutors have not charged Hicks with participating in Trump’s alleged scheme to influence the election.
When Hicks testified before the House Judiciary Committee shortly before the documents were released, Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee asked him several times if he was ever present when Trump and Cohen discussed Daniels, according to a published transcript. Closed door interview.

Hicks also said he did not know any more about Daniels than what he had received from reporters.

Hicks testified, “Once again, I had no knowledge of Stormy Daniels other than to say that she would be mentioned in the story among people who were buying stories.” “No specific details were given by the reporter, and I had no information other than what the reporter was telling me.”

Following the release of the documents, Representative Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York and then-chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Hicks asking her to voluntarily return before the committee to clarify her testimony. Nadler cited “blatant inconsistencies” between Hicks’ testimony and open evidence about the phone call.

His lawyers responded by saying that their client stood by his testimony that none of his October 8 calls with Cohen were related to payments to Stormy Daniels.

“The material in the affidavit relating to Ms. Hicks is merely a chronology of the telephone calls, with no information about their content. The fact that multiple telephone calls occurred on the same date does not mean that they were about the same subject. Was in.” Then it was said in a letter.

“Mr. Cohen was discussing anything else that day,” the letter from Hicks’ lawyers added, adding, “His conversation with Ms. Hicks was not about Stormy Daniels or any arrangement related to ‘Hush Money.’ ‘