US President Donald Trump reacts as he stands next to former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks outside the Oval Office as he leaves the White House for a trip to Cleveland, Ohio, in Washington DC, USA, March 29 2018. Picture taken March 29, 2018.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Former top White House communications adviser Hope Hicks began crying on the witness stand Friday as a lawyer for Donald Trump began cross-examining her testimony in the ex-president’s hush money trial.
Hicks and the jury briefly left the courtroom while she calmed down.
The emotional outburst came early in the time for defense attorneys to question Hicks, who spoke just feet from her former boss in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Prosecutors had questioned Hicks about the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that threatened Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign just weeks before Election Day.
“Everyone was just getting over the shock,” Hicks said.
Hicks, then a top campaign press aide, said she was “very concerned” when she received an email from The Washington Post on Oct. 7, 2016, seeking comment on the audio tape Trump brags about sexual misconduct.
Hicks was concerned “about the content of the email” and about “the lack of time to respond,” she testified.
She said she notified other campaign officials, including Jason Miller, David Bosse, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. She wrote that the initial strategy should be to “listen to the tape to be sure” and “deny, deny, deny.”
When Trump read the transcript of the tape, he said, “That doesn’t sound like something I would say,” Hicks testified.
In a brief cross-examination, Hicks told Trump’s lawyer that she was not involved in the Trump Organization’s record-keeping practices while she was at the White House.
The tape is a key part of the case against Trump, who is accused of falsifying records to silence damaging information about him before the 2016 election.
Attorney Keith Davidson testified Tuesday that the tape increased media interest in porn star Stormy Daniels’ claim that she had sex with Trump while he was married years earlier.
“I think before, before [the] “As far as I know, there was very little interest in the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape,” said Davidson, who represented Daniels and helped negotiate a $130,000 hush-money payment to her.
Hicks, 35, has deep roots in Trump’s business and political life and was present at many of the scandals that marked Trump’s campaign and his time in office. She worked for the Trump Organization before being hired as press secretary for Trump’s campaign in early 2015. Hicks worked for Trump during his four years in the White House.
Hicks, appearing in Manhattan Supreme Court under a subpoena, testified that she had not spoken to Trump since the summer or fall of 2022.
Her testimony follows that of eight other witnesses, including Davidson, who negotiated six-figure hush-money deals for Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the payment to Daniels. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accuses Trump of unlawfully trying to influence the election by purchasing and suppressing damaging information about him.
On Thursday, Judge Juan Merchan held a hearing on whether Trump again violated the gag order by barring him from speaking about jurors, witnesses and others involved in the trial.
Merchan had previously held Trump in criminal contempt nine times for violating his speech restrictions. The judge fined Trump a maximum of $9,000 and warned him that future violations could land him in prison. At Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors pointed to four other alleged violations of the gag order by Trump, but said they were not aimed at sending him to prison.
Merchan has yet to decide on the other alleged violations.
Read more about Trump’s hush money trial
During two days of testimony, Davidson discussed his work with the National Enquirer and Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen in crafting the hush-money deals, shedding light on how tabloids go about their hunt for sensational stories.
David Pecker, the former CEO of the Enquirer publisher, described his work as “checkbook journalism” in previous testimony and said he made deals aimed at improving Trump’s election chances.
The night Trump won the election, Davidson texted the then-editor-in-chief of the Enquirer: “What did we do?”
He testified Thursday that the text was “a kind of gallows humor.” But he added that he and editor-in-chief Dylan Howard understood at the time that “our activities may have in some way supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Under cross-examination, Trump’s lawyer emphasized that Davidson had never met or spoken to Trump and that all of his knowledge of the then-presidential candidate was secondhand.
After Davidson left the stand, prosecutors called Douglas Daus, a forensic analyst for Bragg’s office, who detailed his findings from Cohen’s phone.
Jurors heard a recording of Trump asking Cohen, “So what do we have to pay for this – 150?” and instructing his lawyer to “pay with cash.” Pecker’s company at the time, American Media, paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her affair claim as part of an alleged “catch and kill” plan to bury the story.
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2024-05-03 20:24:13
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