Called to the stand

Trump's close aide Hope Hicks is called to the stand

From CNN's Kaitlan Collins

Hope Hicks, once considered one of Donald Trump’s closest confidantes, has been called to the stand as the prosecution's next witness.

As CNN has reported previously, Hicks appeared before the grand jury last year before Trump was indicted, as did Kellyanne Conway.

Hicks was Trump’s press secretary during the campaign and could shed light on what was happening inside the political operation in the final weeks before the 2016 election, as Michael Cohen was paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels to remain quiet about an alleged affair that Trump worried could upend his presidential campaign. Trump reimbursed Cohen after he took office and has since been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. The former president has pleaded not guilty and denied the affair.

Federal search warrants released in 2019 showed that prosecutors with the US attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York found there was a mad scramble inside the Trump campaign to suppress additional allegations of a sexual nature from becoming public after the “Access Hollywood” tape was released in the fall of 2016.

At the time, Hicks called Cohen and Trump joined, according to the documents. From there Cohen, acting as a middleman, was involved in at least 10 telephone calls that day, some involving Trump and Hicks and others involving American Media Inc. executives David Pecker and Dylan Howard. AMI owns the National Enquirer tabloid.

Those conversations, FBI officials believed, were apparently about Daniels, an adult film actress also known as Stephanie Clifford, according to the documents.

When Hicks testified before the House Judiciary Committee shortly before the documents’ release, she answered “no” when asked multiple times by Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee whether she was ever present when Trump and Cohen discussed Stormy Daniels, according to a transcript released of the closed-door interview.

Hicks also said she had no information about Daniels other than what she learned from reporters.