As Hope Hicks, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign secretary, took the witness stand in the ex-president’s New York criminal hush-money trial, she described his staffers’ panic when a recording emerged in which he bragged about groping women, saying “this was a crisis” for his presidential bid.
Hicks also placed Trump squarely at the center of his campaign media strategy, telling jurors “we were all just following his lead”. The testimony marks a turning point for prosecutors, as she is the first Trump staffer with intimate knowledge of Trump’s campaign to testify about his alleged misconduct.
Prosecutors allege that he tried to use payoffs to bury stories that could harm his candidacy. While her name has come up at various points during the trial, Hicks’ placement of Trump in the middle of this alleged media strategy is a stunning development.
“Who overall was responsible for branding strategy?” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo asked.
“I would say that Mr Trump was responsible,” Hicks said. “He deserves the credit for the different messages that the campaign focused on in terms of the agenda that he put forth.”
Hicks – who reportedly had a close relationship with Trump until her anger about the January 6 insurrection surfaced – was clearly uncomfortable. When Hicks walked to the witness stand on Friday in the ex-president’s New York criminal hush-money trial, he traced her with his eyes as she passed him. Hicks, a willowy figure who crossed into the well with small steps, had a quavering voice as she introduced herself to jurors.
“My name is Hope Charlotte Hicks, and my last name is spelled H-I-C-K-S,” she said. Unsure the mic was picking up her voice, she said: “I’m really nervous.”
Hicks, who was repeatedly interviewed by Robert Mueller due to her longtime proximity to Trump, also served in the White House as his communications director.
When Hicks was questioned about the Access Hollywood tape that leaked in early October 2016 – in which Trump notoriously boasted that when a man is famous, he can “grab [women] by the pussy – jurors were shown a transcript of the tape.
Asked what her first reaction was to receiving an email from a Washington Post reporter about the tape, Hicks said she was “very concerned” about the contents of the email, and the lack of time to respond.
She says she forwarded the email with the subject line: “URGENT WashPost query” to others in the campaign. “It was a damaging development,” Hicks said. “[The] consensus among us that this was damaging – this was a crisis.”
Former tabloid honcho David Pecker – whom prosecutors said colluded with Trump and Michael Cohen to bury stories that could hurt his campaign– said Hicks was present at the trio’s summer 2015 Trump Tower meeting.
Pecker also testified that Hicks was present on a call where Trump railed angrily about one of his alleged paramours doing TV interviews.
Jurors were previously shown text messages between Hicks and Cohen in which she repeatedly told him to “pray!” that a claim that adult star Stormy Daniels had a fling with Trump wouldn’t surface.
Manhattan prosecutors contend that Cohen bought Daniels’ silence about a claimed sexual liaison with Trump for $130,000. They say that he coordinated National Enquirer parent company AMI’s payoff to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who also alleged a sexual relationship with Trump.
They allege that Cohen did so to prevent damaging information from thwarting Trump’s presidential bid.
Trump faces counts for allegedly falsifying business records, by describing repayments to Cohen as legal expenses on his company’s documents. Prosecutors contended that Trump, Cohen and former AMI head David Pecker hatched their catch-and-kill scheme during that summer 2015 meeting at Trump Tower.