Hicks dodges House investigators’ questions

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.