Her voice deep and her posture tense, the woman who has spent years guiding Donald J. Trump through conflict and scandal stepped to the witness stand Friday carrying another burden. She was there to testify in his criminal trial, seated under the fluorescent lights of a bleak Manhattan courtroom, 15 feet from the former president, whom she once fiercely defended.
“I’m really nervous,” Hope Hicks, Trump’s former spokeswoman, messaging maven and general counsel, admitted to questioning prosecutors, already in a riveted courtroom. declared the obvious.
Hours later, when Trump’s lawyers began cross-examining her, Hicks’ anxiety reached a climax and she began to cry. Her Hicks voice cracked and Trump looked at her.
The question that initially upset Ms. Hicks was about her time working at the family-run Trump Organization, where she had fond memories. Hicks left the witness stand and the trial was suspended to allow her to compose herself. She returned a few minutes later and continued her testimony, occasionally wiping her eyes with a tissue.
This striking display of emotion reflected Ms. Hicks’ discomfort with testifying against the man who launched her career and entrusted her reputation to him. Hicks seemed to hold back tears as each questioning brought back memories of working for Trump at his company, on the campaign trail and, ultimately, in the White House. .
Hicks lost support for Trump after it was revealed that she had personally expressed anger over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, but in her testimony. He said he had not spoken to Trump in nearly two years. Year.
Trump is on trial on 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a porn star sex scandal, which carries a maximum penalty of four years in prison. The case, brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, is the first criminal prosecution against a U.S. president.
Prosecutors subpoenaed Hicks against her will to prove Trump’s outsized role in suppressing that and other scandals.
She testified, peppered with apologetic compliments, that Trump was an image-obsessed micromanager. She also acknowledged that it was impossible for Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, to pay hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels without the then-candidate’s permission.
And Mr. Hicks testified that Mr. Trump was aware of the quid pro quo years later. “Mr. Trump’s opinion was, “It would have been bad if that story had come out before the election.”
But she was not entirely useless to the defense, telling Trump’s lawyers that their client was a family man and that his motive for covering up the damning report was not just to win the election, but to protect his family life. This gave him the courage to argue that it may have been for his own sake. The argument could undermine prosecutors’ theory that Trump authorized the hush money payments because he was intent on winning the White House.
Ms. Hicks, who gave several hours of testimony to a transfixed jury of 12 New Yorkers, described the courtroom as the setting for the 2016 presidential campaign: the 25th floor of Trump Tower, dubbed Trump Force. I boarded a plane and flew back to 30,000 feet. One is to put it in your campaign car on the way to a rally.
The moment Ms. Hicks describes in vivid detail was one in which she and Mr. Trump dealt with one scandal after another.
The first crisis occurred when the Washington Post contacted Hicks about obtaining a recording of Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals. The tape was from the set of “Access Hollywood,” where senior advisers flocked to Trump Tower and sent the campaign into a frenzy.
Hicks said she was “a little surprised” but “had a hunch this was going to be a big story and something that would dominate the news cycle for at least the next few days.”
Trump was also upset, she said, and one of his early reactions was to tell her that his comments about women were “not what Trump would say.”
The fallout from the tape quickly spread, and Ms. Daniels seized the opportunity to promote her story of sexual encounters with Mr. Trump. Desperate to buy her silence, Mr. Cohen struck a $130,000 hush-money deal that is at the center of the case against the former president. After he struck an agreement, the crisis subsided for the time being.
But in the waning days of the campaign, the Wall Street Journal contacted Hicks with more damaging news. The newspaper is preparing to report that the National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid with close ties to Trump, has bought and killed an article about a former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump several years ago. was completed.
Ms Hicks first tried to make campaign connections with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who owned the Journal, so she could “buy a little extra time to deal with this issue,” she said. . When that didn’t work, she called Mr. Cohen, who had an affair with tabloid publisher David Pecker.
Ms. Hicks said Mr. Trump testified that the affair story was not true, but she did not remember whether Mr. Hicks said “word for word” that he did not know about the hush money deal.
The paper was also scheduled to write about Daniels, but Hicks again “unequivocally” denied to reporters that Trump had an affair with Daniels.
Shortly after the story about the Playboy model broke, five days before the election, Mr. Hicks and Mr. Cohen exchanged a series of text messages in which they wished the story would go away.
“I don’t think this is covered much,” she said, adding, “The media is the worst.”
When Mr. Cohen mentioned how little coverage the story received, Mr. Hicks responded: It’s working! (Ms. Hicks, who testified in court in a criminal case derived in part from that story, acknowledged the irony of that particular message.)
Trump won the election, but the Journal’s investigation was not yet complete. In early 2018, Cohen published an article revealing that he had paid Daniels $130,000. When asked about it, Hicks became vague, saying she couldn’t remember what happened at the time. She was quite nervous, clenched her jaw, and stumbled a little when speaking.
Ms. Hicks said she was unaware of the records Mr. Trump allegedly falsified. Prosecutors allege the records disguised Trump’s repayments to Cohen for hush money.
And at times, she appeared to be helping the defense. Asked about Trump’s reaction to the original Wall Street Journal article, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said he was “concerned about how it would be perceived by his wife.” The reaction is reminiscent of the defense’s opening statement, in which Trump was portrayed as a family man, and provides another motivation for efforts to suppress damaging information that prosecutors have already linked to Trump. It was useful.
Still, Hicks’ testimony was key to the prosecution’s case, including when he recalled potentially important conversations. “I believe I heard Mr. Trump talking to Mr. Cohen shortly after this article was published,” she said, adding that prosecutors could use it to suggest that Mr. Trump was involved in a conspiracy. This is to claim that.
And she made a monumental observation that supports prosecutors’ contention that Trump directed the payments to Cohen. She scoffed at prosecutors’ questions that led her to wonder, “Would Mr. Cohen have paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 out of the kindness of his heart?”
That kind of altruistic behavior “doesn’t suit Michael,” she says.
The testimony marked a stunning spectacle of the former president’s inner circle turning against him.
Ms. Hicks, an accomplished lacrosse player and former model, began working with Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka at the Trump Organization in her mid-20s and was unexpectedly promoted to campaign press secretary. Between two stints at the White House, including the prestigious role of communications director, she worked at Fox, where she currently serves as a communications consultant.
Hicks, now 35, appeared cautious and self-deprecating on stage, but peppered her detailed narrative with the words, “I don’t remember.”
Her emotional testimony both helped and hurt her old boss. She said that while the Trump Organization is highly successful, it is run “like a small family business,” so “everyone who works there reports to Mr. Trump in a sense.”
This description is reflected in the prosecutor’s profile of Trump as his boss in the field, who must have known about false records and hidden sex scandals.
“He knew what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it, and we all just followed his lead,” Hicks said.
Kate Christbeck Contributed to the report.
May 4, 2024
:
A previous version of this article incorrectly listed Hope Hicks’ employer. It wasn’t Fox News, it was Fox Corporation.
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