Dems livid as Hicks plays dodge ball.....

'It’s a farce': Dems livid as Hope Hicks dodges questions

Trump's former longtime confidante met with lawmakers behind closed doors to discuss the president's alleged efforts to thwart Mueller's Russia probe.

By KYLE CHENEY and ANDREW DESIDERIO

House Democrats erupted Wednesday at the White House’s repeated interference in their nearly eight-hour interview with Hope Hicks, a longtime confidante of President Donald Trump who was a central witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation.

Several House Judiciary Committee members exiting the closed-door interview said a White House lawyer present for her testimony repeatedly claimed Hicks had blanket immunity from discussing her tenure as a top aide to the president, including during the presidential transition period. Democrats said she wouldn’t answer questions as basic as where she sat in the West Wing or whether she told the truth to Mueller.

“We’re watching obstruction of justice in action,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.).

“It’s a farce,” added Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who said Hicks at one point tried to answer a question about an episode involving former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski only to be cut off by the White House counsel.

Hicks’ appearance was the first time a current or former Trump administration official testified before the Judiciary Committee as part of its obstruction of justice investigation, which began in March. But it’s unclear whether her testimony — which did not touch on her White House service — will advance the panel’s probe, which focuses on Trump’s conduct as president.

“She made clear she wouldn’t answer a single question about her time unless the White House counsel told her it was OK,” an exasperated Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said in an interview. “She couldn’t even characterize her testimony to the special counsel.”

Deutch added that the White House was not formally asserting executive privilege to block Hicks from answering certain questions; rather, the lawyer was referring to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s Tuesday letter claiming that Hicks was “absolutely immune” from discussing her tenure in the Trump administration.

Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) dismissed the White House’s immunity claims and said his committee would “destroy” those assertions in court if he chose to file a lawsuit to enforce the panel’s subpoena that was issued to Hicks earlier this year.

Lieu said the White House lawyers were “making crap up” to block Hicks from testifying. He said she answered some questions about her time on the Trump campaign that provided new information, but Lieu and multiple other lawmakers declined to characterize her comments. A transcript of the interview could be released within 48 hours, aides said.

Jayapal said lawyers even objected to Hicks discussing episodes that occurred after she left the White House — and that Hicks went along with it.

“She is making a choice to follow along with all the claims of absolute immunity,” Jayapal said, adding: “Basically, she can say her name.”

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said Hicks answered some questions about alleged hush-money payments Donald Trump directed to women accusing him of extramarital affairs just before the 2016 presidential election. But Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who described Hicks’ testimony as a “building block,” said, “we’ll have to move toward court proceedings to delve into those questions more deeply.”

Cicilline also said Hicks answered questions about campaign meetings during which Wikileaks was discussed, but said lawmakers gleaned little new information.

He added that Hicks, in the first hour of her questioning, expressed no regret and did not acknowledge that any of her public statements during the campaign were false — despite clear evidence to the contrary, including her admission to the House Intelligence Committee last year that she sometimes told “white lies” on Trump’s behalf.

Democrats were bracing for a long day of fighting with the White House over executive privilege and claims that Hicks doesn’t have to answer questions about her time in the West Wing or on the post-election transition period.

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee said the fact that Hicks was appearing at all was evidence that Democrats have been overzealous in their decision to issue a series of subpoenas and accuse the White House of blocking access to information.

“There’s nothing new here,” said Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “We took eight hours to find out really what most of us knew at the beginning.”

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) agreed, telling reporters he learned “nothing new.” Cohen and a majority of Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have been agitating for the panel to launch impeachment proceedings.

Trump also expressed his displeasure that Hicks was testifying, writing on Twitter Wednesday: “So sad that the Democrats are putting wonderful Hope Hicks through hell, for 3 years now, after total exoneration by Robert Mueller & the Mueller Report. They were unhappy with result so they want a Do Over. Very unfair & costly to her.”

Hicks’ name appears 184 times in Mueller’s blockbuster report, and the interview marked her first appearance before lawmakers since the report became public.

The closed-door hearing deprived Democrats of the high-drama, made-for-TV moments they have been seeking in order to beam Mueller’s damning findings into viewers’ living rooms. But it represents a symbolic victory in their effort to pierce Trump’s blockade of current and former White House officials from testifying in the Democrat-led obstruction of justice investigation.

Hicks’ refusal to discuss her White House tenure likely prevented any dramatic revelations about potential obstruction because Mueller’s two-year investigation occurred entirely during the Trump presidency. The White House has urged former officials to decline the Judiciary Committee's demands for testimony and documents, claiming that they're all subject to a broad claim of executive privilege.

Hicks' attorney indicated she was prepared to provide documents to the committee related to her time on the campaign, but not in the White House.

Mueller concluded that the Trump campaign welcomed that help and strategized about how to capitalize on it. Yet Mueller also found that he lacked sufficient evidence to charge any American with knowingly conspiring with the Russian effort.

Hicks’ appearance on Capitol Hill was not her first time testifying to lawmakers as part of the Russia probe. She testified to the House and Senate intelligence committees in early 2018 about her time on the campaign and on the post-election transition team.

At the time, Democrats on the House panel were infuriated that Hicks wouldn't discuss her White House tenure, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), now the committee's chairman, called on Republicans to subpoena her and possibly initiate contempt proceedings.

But Hicks was more forthcoming with Mueller. Mueller’s report indicates his team interviewed Hicks at least three times — on Dec. 7, 2017, on Dec. 8, 2017 and on March 13, 2018 — two weeks after her appearance before the House Intelligence Committee. Her testimony focused on firsthand details of Trump’s repeated efforts to constrain or end the Mueller investigation.

She described how after providing a false statement to reporters claiming there were no contacts between the Trump campaign and any foreign entities, she asked other senior campaign officials — Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller and possibly Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon — whether the statement was accurate. None of them pushed back, she said.

Hicks also provided evidence that Trump’s hostility toward the Russia probe stemmed from personal insecurities about whether Russian interference rendered his 2016 victory illegitimate. She also testified that President Barack Obama had warned Trump about security concerns regarding incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russia, a warning she said “sat with” Trump longer than she expected. Hicks also recalled Trump ordering aides to defend him after the backlash over his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. And she provided details about Trump’s demand that his then-White House counsel, Don McGahn, falsely deny that Trump had asked him to fire Mueller.

But Hicks’ most significant testimony may have revolved around efforts by Trump to pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions to constrain the Russia investigation. Hicks told Mueller’s team that Trump scolded Sessions in front of her for his decision to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation. She also recalled Trump discussing Sessions’ offer to resign with other advisers, shortly after Mueller’s appointment in May 2017.

Though Hicks provided voluminous details of her interactions with Trump and recollection of crucial moments in the Russia investigation, she was notably silent on two pieces of Mueller’s findings that describe direct actions she took to advance the president’s efforts to influence the probe.

In one July 2017 episode, Mueller cited Lewandowski, who testified that Trump dictated a note to deliver to Sessions, urging him to constrain the Mueller probe. Lewandowski said he asked Hicks to type up the handwritten dictation and retrieved it from her partway through his meeting with Trump. Hicks’ version of that interaction does not appear in the report.

Similarly, Hicks’ testimony is missing from Mueller’s account of efforts by Trump to potentially influence Flynn from testifying against him, a month after Flynn decided to cooperate with the investigation. In a January 2018 interview, Flynn recalled that after his resignation, he received phone calls from then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and Hicks, “who said she wanted to relay on behalf of the president that the president hoped Flynn was OK.”

Hicks’ testimony about that call does not appear in the report. Her attorney, Robert Trout, declined to respond to multiple requests for comment on those gaps.