Hope Hicks, who was one of former President Donald Trump’s closest aides for years, is testifying on the stand at Trump’s criminal trial in New York, where prosecutors are asking her about some of the key events at issue in the case.
Hicks was Trump’s top press aide during his 2016 presidential campaign and later served as White House communications director. Prosecutors questioned her about her interactions with Trump, and her knowledge of an alleged scheme to suppress salacious stories that could have damaged Trump’s election prospects.
Earlier in the trial, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified that Hicks had been “in and out” of a 2015 Trump Tower meeting where Pecker, Trump and Michael Cohen, Trump’s attorney at the time, allegedly hatched the scheme to bury stories about Trump, a tactic now known as “catch and kill.”
Hicks said she first heard of the payments to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels on Nov. 4, 2016, when a Wall Street Journal reporter sent her questions about the McDougal payment. McDougal was a former Playboy model who received $150,000 from the Enquirer’s parent company in exchange for the rights to her claim that she had sex with Trump.
Hicks also had a front-row seat to one of the most pivotal moments of the 2016 campaign: the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, a 2005 recording in which Trump is heard saying he could “grab [women] by the p****” and “make them do anything.”
The Liberal Washington Post first published the tape on Oct. 7, 2016, just weeks before Election Day. Hicks told the jury about how she learned about the tape shortly before the story was published, and said she was “a little stunned.”
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Author: Dillon B
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