Hicks resists investigators’ questions about president

White House communications director Hope Hicks is the latest close adviser to President Donald Trump to refuse to answer questions about the administration or transition period, posed by House investigators as part of their probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Democrats and Republicans emerging from the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing interview with Hicks on Tuesday noted that she 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 panel member Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., who said he believed that the panel should serve Hicks with a subpoena, as it did with former White House strategist Stephen Bannon last month when he refused to answer similar questions.

“There’s no hope to get all our answers,” said Quigley, noting the obvious pun and adding: “tip your servers.”

Hicks’s refusal to answer questions about the Trump administration’s tenure suggests 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.