Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Hicks will meet House panel
Former White House communications director has agreed to interview with the House Judiciary Committee.
WASHINGTON — Former White House communications director Hope Hicks has agreed to a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee, the panel announced Wednesday, a breakthrough for Democrats who have been frustrated by President Donald Trump’s broad stonewalling of their investigations.
The Judiciary panel subpoenaed Hicks, a close and trusted Trump aide who worked for the presidential campaign and in the White House, last month as part of its investigation into special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and obstruction of justice. Her June 19 interview will mark the first time a former Trump aide has testified before the panel as part of its probe.
Hicks was a key witness for Mueller, delivering important information to the special counsel’s office about multiple episodes involving the president. That includes the president’s role in the drafting of a misleading and incomplete statement about a 2016 Trump Tower meeting at which Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton from Russians with ties to the Kremlin.
The president further stirred those waters Wednesday when he told ABC News that if a foreign power offered dirt on his 2020 opponent, he’d be open to accepting it and that he’d have no obligation to call in the FBI.
“I think I’d want to hear it,” Trump said, “There’s nothing wrong with listening.”
Hicks and another former White House aide, Annie Donaldson, both defied subpoenas last week to provide documents to the committee after the White House directed them not to cooperate. That came after former White House counsel Don McGahn also defied subpoenas for documents and testimony at the direction of the White House. McGahn was mentioned frequently in Mueller’s report, in addition to Donaldson, who was his aide.
While the interview will be behind closed doors, the committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, said the interview transcript will be released to the public.
Democrats hope that Hicks’ interview will be the first of many related to Mueller’s report. They are expected to go to court soon to enforce a subpoena against McGahn, and negotiations are ongoing for Mueller’s own testimony. Mueller has made it clear that he doesn’t want to testify and will not go beyond the substance of the report in any questioning, but Democrats want to talk to him anyway.
On Wednesday, the House intelligence panel heard from former FBI officials who told lawmakers that Russian meddling in the 2016 election bore some of the textbook tricks of the trade of Kremlin spycraft, including the volume and breadth of contacts with Trump associates.
The two witnesses at the hearing, Robert Anderson and Stephanie Douglas, highlighted aspects of the Mueller report they said showed Russian efforts to screen and test Trump campaign associates, to establish backchannels of communications and to spread their contacts around in hopes of maximizing their chances of getting what they wanted.
Also Wednesday, Trump Jr. spoke with the Senate intelligence committee for about three hours to clarify an interview with the committee’s staff in 2017. Senators wanted to talk to him again about the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer and a real estate project in Moscow.
The president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, told a House committee in February that he had briefed Trump Jr. approximately 10 times about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow before the 2016 election. But Trump Jr. had told Congress he was only “peripherally aware” of the real estate proposal.
As he left the interview, Trump Jr. said he was happy to clarify his answers, but “I don’t think I changed any of what I said because there was nothing to change.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray had told lawmakers that Trump Jr. should have called his agency to report the offer.
But Trump, who nominated Wray to the role in 2017, said in his ABC News interview that he disagrees. “The FBI director is wrong,” the president said. He added, “Life doesn’t work like that.”
Asked whether his advisers should accept information on an opponent from Russia, China or another nation or call the FBI this time, Trump said, “I think maybe you do both,” expressing openness to reviewing the information.