Its getting heated.. [NYTimes]: We know this, but it’s still amazing to hear Hope Hicks say it aloud: During the period where she was texting with Michael Cohen about the Wall Street Journal story and the damage it could potentially cause, the presidential election was three days away. Jonah Bromwich
charges are falsifying business records to hide #HushMoney payments in lead up to 2016 election to #influence electorate
just one Trump supporter at the courthouse draped in a Trump flag.
#StormyDaniels's lawyer, #KeithDavidson, to return to stand. He negotiated the hush-money payment at the center of the case, & is expected to lay out details of the deal.
#HopeHicks continues flattering her old boss, saying that the #TrumpOrganization was big & successful, but run “like a small family business.” Because of that, she says, “Everybody that works there in some sense reports to Mr. Trump.”
This is good for prosecutors showing #Trump personally ran his affairs; Hicks can come off as praising him while simultaneously harming him.
Colangelo keeps asking #HopeHicks to acknowledge that #Trump oversaw every aspect of her job: “I reported to Mr. Trump” & “Mr. Trump was responsible” are two things she’s just said. Again, this is key for prosecutors, showing that Trump is a hands-on manager — & hoping to convince the jury he would have taken the same hands-on approach as #MichaelCohen brought him news of negative stories to quash.
#HopeHicks is testifying in detail how #Trump praised David #Pecker, then the publisher of The #NationalEnquirer, after the tabloid ran a story saying one of his #GOP presidential rivals, Dr. Ben Carson, had left a sponge in a young girl’s brain. “Mr. Trump was congratulating him on the great reporting,” she recalls. “This is Pulitzer-worthy,” Hicks says she recalls him saying.
Asked to describe the #NationalEnquirer article attack on #TedCruz’s father, #HopeHicks looks like she is going to laugh: “His father may have been involved with Lee Harvey Oswald” — the man who shot John F. Kennedy — “or something like that.”
Hope Hicks is now being questioned about the “#AccessHollywood” tape & her expression is no longer jovial. She swallows hard & says that yes, she was familiar.
#HopeHicks is shown an email that reporter David Fahrenthold sent her on 7 Oct, 2016, seeking comment on the #AccessHollywood tape. The email contained a transcript of what was said on it.
“I was concerned. Very concerned.…I was concerned about the contents of the email, I was concerned about the lack of time to respond, I was concerned that we had a transcript but not a tape. There was a lot at play.”
#HopeHicks is then shown a copy of her email forwarding the message to to “campaign leadership.” The email went to, among other people, Kellyanne Conway & Steve Bannon.
In it, she says: “Need to hear the tape to be sure,” & “Deny, deny, deny.” She describes it to prosecutor Colangelo as a “reflex.”
#HopeHicks says that when she shared the email from The Washington Post w/ #Trump, one of his initial reactions was to say that his comments about assaulting women “didn’t sound like something he would say.” [he later admits it was him, so = liar]
Hicks says she went to conference room to discuss #AccessHollywood tape & Trump came to see what was happening:
#HopeHicks testified that the media response to the #AccessHollywood tape was “intense” & that it “dominated coverage.” She recalled that a Category 4 hurricane was anticipated to make landfall at that time but she doesn’t think anyone remembers where or when the hurricane landed. “It was all #Trump all the time for the next 36 hours,” she said.
#HopeHicks testified that she thought that the #AccessHollywood tape was going to be a massive story that would dominate the news cycle for at least the next several days.
She said it was a “damaging development” for the campaign, w/lots of layers that “complicated where we were trying to go in a way that was going to be hard to overcome.”
“There was consensus among us all that the tape was damaging & that this was going to be a crisis," she said.
She says she asked Cohen to “chase down a rumor,” she says, about another tape he had heard about that could be problematic for the campaign. This could be the beginning of hearing what Hicks has to say about the. #HushMoney payment to #StormyDaniels, which was made by Cohen & where the charges against #Trump stem from.
#HopeHicks re the email to #JaredKushner:
she said, bc of Kushner’s good relationship w/ #RupertMurdoch — who owned the WSJ— maybe he could “buy a little extra time to deal with this.” Kushner responded that “he wasn’t going to be able to reach Rupert & we should just work on responding & dealing with it.”
The first question asked in the email: “Did Mr. #Trump have an extramarital affair w/ #KarenMcDougal?”
#StormyDaniels was also going to be mentioned in the WSJ artice, #HopeHicks testifies, & says that she spoke not only to #MichaelCohen about Daniels's claims, but to #Trump too.
This fits w/ the banker’s testimony & Daniels’s lawyer’s testimony about Cohen becoming increasingly frantic in seeking to quiet Daniels once they knew a reporter was on the trail of the story.
Hicks wrote things like,“We deny each & every accusation”
Cohen’s version:
"These accusations are completely untrue & just the latest despicable attempt by the liberal media & the Clinton machine to distract the public from the FBI’s ongoing criminal investigation into Secretary Clinton & her closest associates” acc/to a court exhibit of the email
#HopeHicks is expected to return to the stand soon to resume her testimony. She likely won’t be up there much longer today.
Friday’s #TrumpTrial will adjourn around 3:45PM ET US due to a juror having an appointment.
So it is likely Hicks will be back on the stand Monday not only for cross, but possibly for further direct.
Prosecution asks if she witnessed conversations between Trump & #MichaelCohen
“I believe I heard Mr. Trump speaking to Mr. Cohen shortly after the story was published,” she says.
If prosecutors can show the Cohen-Trump relationship, it’ll be easier to convince jurors that Cohen was doing Trump’s bidding & not acting on his own as defense is arguing.
Hicks says that she was told by #Trump that he had not had an affair w/ McDougal, but that she did not remember him “verbatim” saying that he had no knowledge of that hush-money deal.
This is testimony of a lie shared w/the media & public.