A chief aide who gave voice to Donald Trump’s chaotic 2016 marketing campaign for the presidency broke down in tears on the witness stand in his hush cash trial, moments after she testified about funds to an grownup movie star whose allegations threatened to derail his marketing campaign.
The emotional second from Hope Hicks inside a Manhattan prison court docket on Friday adopted revealing testimony about her injury management within the weeks earlier than Election Day, and her behind-the-scenes public relations efforts to salvage Mr Trump’s marketing campaign whereas tales about his alleged affairs and vulgar feedback about girls had been piling up.
Ms Hicks – the primary main determine inside Mr Trump’s orbit to testify within the trial, which concluded its second week of testimony on Friday – turned her face away from the court docket and dabbed her eyes with a tissue as she started to cry. Microphones on the witness stand picked up the sounds of quiet sobs.
Moments earlier, she stated that Mr Trump had instructed her that his former legal professional Michael Cohen “felt prefer it was his job to guard him.”
Cohen wired Stormy Daniels $130,000 weeks earlier than Election Day in 2016, and a collection of reimbursement funds from Mr Trump within the months that adopted are actually on the heart of a prison case in opposition to the previous president.
Mr Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying enterprise data for allegedly protecting up these funds as “authorized bills” in an effort to spice up his possibilities of successful the election. He has denied the affairs and pleaded not responsible.
“He did it within the kindness of his personal coronary heart and he didn’t inform anybody about it,” she stated, recalling what Mr Trump instructed her in 2018 about Cohen’s funds.
Requested by the prosecution whether or not she believed that Mr Trump’s description of Cohen was per what she knew about him, she stated: “I’d say that may be out of character for Michael.”
“I didn’t know Michael to be an particularly charitable individual, or a selfless individual,” she stated. “The sort of one that seeks credit score.”
Protection legal professional Emil Bove was solely moments right into a benign collection of questions on her work historical past earlier than she broke down. New York Justice Juan Merchan requested if she wanted a break.
“Sure, please,” she stated.
Mr Bove’s line of questions stood in stark distinction to his rapid-fire and infrequently aggressive method to different prosecution witnesses.
To Ms Hicks, he spoke slowly, with a low and smooth voice, trying to tug out of her a way that issues in Mr Trump’s enterprise and marketing campaign had been secure, that injury management over harmful tales are a part of the job, and that Mr Trump in the end cared about his household – an echo of the portrait of the previous president as a consummate household man launched in opening statements.
Ms Hicks additionally modified up how she spoke about him: “President Trump.”
Ms Hicks, who has not had spoken to Mr Trump since 2022, was a former communications director of the Trump Group who went on to work for his marketing campaign after which the White Home.
She left the administration in 2018 and returned in 2020.
Days earlier than a presidential debate, and fewer than one month earlier than Election Day in 2016, a recording of Mr Trump bragging about grabbing girls’s genitals despatched shockwaves by means of his marketing campaign, in keeping with testimony from Ms Hicks.
She stated that the discharge of the Entry Hollywood tape was a “damaging improvement” that threatened to derail the marketing campaign in a busy and significant interval earlier than the election.
She was “shocked,” she stated from the witness stand on Friday.
“It’s arduous to explain,” Ms Hicks stated. “It was undoubtedly regarding. And I had an excellent sense that this was going to be an enormous story and kind of dominate the information cycle for the subsequent a number of days, a minimum of … It was a harmful improvement.”
The story was “sort of pulling us backwards, and it was going to be troublesome to beat,” she stated.
Manhattan prosecutors have argued that the tape’s launch fuelled Mr Trump’s makes an attempt to bury some other politically compromising tales involving allegations of his affairs, in the end resulting in an pressing deal to purchase the rights to allegations from Ms Daniels, who claimed to have had intercourse with Mr Trump a decade earlier.
That deal was finalised simply weeks earlier than Election Day.
Ms Hicks, who was working as a press secretary for Mr Trump’s marketing campaign on the time, was in her workplace on the 14th flooring of Trump Tower in New York when she obtained an e-mail from a reporter from The Washington Publish asking for remark in regards to the contents of the Entry Hollywood tape.
She forwarded the e-mail to marketing campaign officers Jason Miller, David Bossie, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.
“FLAGGING,” she wrote. “1. Want to listen to the tape to make sure 2. Deny, deny, deny”.
“It’s a reflex,” she stated with amusing on Friday. “I used to be clearly a bit shocked and had not realized that everything of the transcript was within the e-mail.”
That tape, recorded in 2005, captured Mr Trump saying that he “moved” on a feminine TV persona “like a b****”.
“I’m robotically drawn to stunning… I simply begin kissing them,” he says on the tape. “It’s like a magnet. Simply kiss. I don’t even wait. And if you’re a star, they allow you to do it. You are able to do something. Seize them by the p****. You are able to do something.”
The media response “was intense” and “dominated protection for I might say 36 hours main as much as the controversy” that weekend, Ms Hicks stated.
“On the time I obtained the e-mail … we had been anticipating a Class 4 hurricane making landfall someplace on the east coast,” she stated. “And I don’t suppose anybody remembers the place that hurricane made landfall.”
Assistant District Lawyer Matthew Colangelo repeated that testimony again to her.
“The Entry Hollywood tape pushed the hurricane off the information?” he stated.
Mr Trump misplaced endorsements and different Republican officers started themselves from him after the tape’s launch, Ms Hicks testified.
The marketing campaign, in the meantime, produced statements calling the tape “locker room discuss,” whereas Mr Trump at his rallies he referred to as brewing allegations in opposition to him “horrible lies” and “fabrications, and we will’t allow them to change a very powerful election of our lives.”
4 days earlier than Election Day, The Wall Avenue Journal revealed particulars of a scheme organized with Cohen, Mr Trump and former Nationwide Enquirer writer David Pecker to purchase the rights to allegations from former Playboy mannequin Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had an affair with Mr Trump.
These allegations had been by no means revealed and the story was buried for the value of $150,000, paid by Mr Pecker months earlier, in keeping with data proven in court docket.
Mr Trump adamantly denied the affair in his conversations with Ms Hicks, she stated on Friday.
The Wall Avenue Journal article quotes her as saying “we’ve got no information of any of this” and that any declare of an affair was “completely unfaithful.”
“I don’t keep in mind him verbatim saying that however that was the consensus of the conversations we had been all having,” she testified.
Mr Pecker beforehand testified that Mr Trump and Cohen had been intimately concerned in efforts to bury the story, and a recording performed to jurors earlier this week revealed Mr Trump asking about “financing” the scheme.
That story additionally talked about allegations involving Ms Daniels,
“He was involved in regards to the story,” Ms Hicks stated about Mr Trump’s response.
“He was involved how it could be seen by his spouse, and he needed me to ensure that the newspapers weren’t delivered to their residence that morning,” she stated.
Below questioning from the protection, Ms Hicks stated that Mr Trump “actually values Ms Trump’s opinion.”
“She doesn’t weigh in on a regular basis however when she does it’s actually significant to him and he actually respects what she has to say,” she stated.
“[Mr Trump] didn’t need anybody in his household to be harm or embarrassed,” she stated. “He needed them to be pleased with him.”
