Hope Hicks gets teary testifying at Trump’s trial
New York — Hope Hicks, a former top aide to Donald Trump, appeared to break down crying on the witness stand Friday at Trump’s criminal trial, where she described campaign and White House efforts to keep a lid on scandalous stories about his past sex life.
Her time on the stand marked a significant shift in the focus of trial testimony; after days of hearing about tabloid editors and secret deals to stifle or sell celebrity gossip, the jury was led through the whirlwind of the 2016 presidential campaign and directly to the Oval Office.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office wanted Hicks to show the jury how worried the 2016 Trump campaign was about negative stories about him and women — a key element in Trump’s alleged motive in the hush money case.
Her testimony seemed to accomplish that limited goal, but overall her tenor was respectful and complimentary of Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for president in the November election; far from an aide turning against her former boss, she came across as a still-loyal and reluctant participant in his prosecution.
Hicks has long been seen as one of Trump’s most loyal aides, following him from his business to the 2016 presidential campaign to the White House. After about two hours on the witness stand in a packed courtroom, she was overcome by emotion as Trump lawyer Emil Bove prepared to cross-examine her.
As Bove began, Hicks slowly turned her face away from Trump, who was sitting at the defense table, and toward the jury. She brought her hand to her nose and started to quietly cry.
“Miss Hicks, do you need a break?” asked New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan.
“Yes,” she said through tears.
With that, the jury was sent out of the courtroom while Hicks collected herself.
Trump had watched Hicks enter the courtroom but did not react much during her time on the stand; at some points he wrote notes and passed them to his lawyers, but mostly he sat impassively at the defense table, listening with his eyes mostly closed.
Hicks appeared nervous at the start of her testimony, but there was no confrontation or revelation that seemed to prompt her emotional moment. It appeared that the attention of the high-profile trial, and being a prosecution witness against her former boss, whom she described in positive terms, became overwhelming as the day wore on.
Hicks told the jury about conversations inside the White House in 2018, as aides dealt with the fallout from news stories about payments made to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from going public with allegations about sexual trysts with Trump.
Under questioning from prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, Hicks recounted speaking to Trump after an article appeared in 2018 about a payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. That $130,000 payment was first made by then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, whom Trump later reimbursed. Those reimbursements, and their categorization as legal costs rather than campaign expenses, are the basis of the 34-count indictment filed against Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
After that hush money payment was detailed by the Wall Street Journal, Hicks said, Trump told her that “Michael had paid this woman to protect him from a false allegation, and that Michael felt like it was his job to protect him and that’s what he was doing and he did it out of the kindness of his heart.” Soon after the story came out, Cohen publicly claimed to have made the payment with his own money.
Cohen completed a threeyear prison term after pleading guilty to fraud and lying, and has become an outspoken Trump critic. He is expected to be a key witness in the case. Hicks on Friday became the latest of several trial witnesses who have said biting things about Cohen.
Asked if it sounded like Mr. Cohen to make a $130,000 payment “out of the kindness of his heart,” Hicks replied, “I’d say that would be out of character for Michael … I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person.”
She said he was “the kind of person who seeks credit.”
At another point, Hicks wryly mentioned that Cohen liked to refer to himself as a “fixer,” yet in her experience, he fixed things “only because he first broke it.”
For prosecutors, the main purpose of Hicks’ testimony seemed to be showing that Trump and his campaign were very concerned about allegations made against him by women.
When it came to the Daniels story, which surfaced publicly while he was in the White House, Hicks said Trump told her that “it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
As soon as Hicks said that, prosecutors ended their questioning.
Trump has been found in contempt of court for nine statements that violated the judge’s gag order, and Merchan is considering four additional statements that may also be violations.
Later Friday, a court official said Trump has paid the $9,000 in fines he owed for those violations. The payment was made in two installments: one for $2,000 and another for $7,000.