Hicks refuses to respond to Russia inquiry
Trump aide offers details on transition, nothing on meddling
White House communications director Hope Hicks refuses to answer questions about the Trump administration that House investigators pose as part of their probe of Russian meddling into the election.
WASHINGTON — White House communications director Hope Hicks refused to answer questions about the Trump administration that House investigators posed Tuesday as part of their probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
But under pressure from lawmakers, she began to offer some details about the transition period Tuesday afternoon, according to House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Thomas Rooney, R-Fla., who said Hicks and her lawyers agreed to address topics they had already broached with the Senate Intelligence Committee in an earlier private interview.
Hicks, who has already spoken with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, has emerged as a central figure in an ongoing dispute between lawmakers and the White House about when and where witnesses can legitimately resist answering questions in a congressional probe. Democrats and Republicans emerging from the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing interview with Hicks on Tuesday noted that at first, she categorically resisted answering any questions about events and conversations that occurred since Trump won the election, despite the fact that Trump has not formally invoked executive privilege with the panel.
“No one’s asserting privilege; they’re following the orders of the White House not to answer certain questions,” said Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., a committee member, after the interview had been going for about four hours.
Quigley said the panel should serve Hicks with a subpoena, as it did with former White House strategist Steve Bannon last month when he refused to answer similar questions. “There’s no Hope to get all our answers,” he said, noting the obvious pun and adding: “Tip your servers.”
Rooney suggested that Hicks changed her approach later in the interview, offering answers to at least some questions about event and conversations that occurred between Election Day and Trump’s inauguration. But her refusal to answer questions about the Trump administration’s tenure in the White House suggests that lawmakers will have a difficult time learning her side of a key story: the drafting of a misleading statement to explain an unorthodox meeting at the Trump Tower in Manhattan between top Trump campaign members and a Russian lawyer during the 2016 race.
Hicks works as the White House communications director, but her proximity to Trump and long history of working with the Trump family make her testimony potentially valuable to the panel’s probe of Russian interference.
Republican panel members seemed far less agitated by Hicks’ reluctance to answer questions than they were by Bannon’s. The committee is currently weighing whether to hold Bannon in contempt for his continued silence, under subpoena, when faced with questions that the Trump administration has not already approved regarding the transition period. But after five hours of interviewing her Tuesday, the Republican panel leaders showed no signs of being eager to take legal steps to force Hicks to answer more of their queries.
Questions for Hicks about the transition period and the Trump White House “need to be hammered out by the majority, the minority, and the White House,” Rooney said early Tuesday afternoon. He added that “it’s not really in my purview about what that agreement is, or was, or should be.”
On Monday, Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House’s Russia probe, said he was not aware of any deal with Hicks that would limit the scope of the interview. He also noted that he “would not be surprised” if Hicks refused to answer questions on topics she believed the president might later want to put offlimits by invoking executive privilege, as Bannon and attorney general Jeff Sessions have done.