4:38 p.m. ET, May 3, 2024
Hicks talked about the White House response to the McDougal and Daniels’ stories. Catch up on what she said
Hope Hicks is questioned by Trump attorney Emil Bove on Friday.
Christine Cornell
Donald Trump’s former close confidante Hope Hicks continued to testify after the court returned from its lunch break on Friday.
Overall, she spoke for a little less than three hours and her testimony wrapped before the court adjourned for the day.
Here’s everything you need to know about what she said:
- “I believe I heard Mr. Trump speaking to Mr. Cohen shortly after the story was published,” Hicks testified, adding there was “nothing memorable” about the call with his former attorney. She said Reince Priebus was in the car with her and Trump at the time of the call with Michael Cohen. They were traveling to a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, she said.
- Hicks read the denial she gave for the story, which said the claim of the affair was “totally untrue.” She confirmed that Trump told her to say that. She also testified about monitoring press reaction to the story and discussing it with Cohen.
- Trump was concerned about his wife seeing this story and the possible impact of this story on his presidential campaign, Hicks said. “Everything we talked about in the context of this time period and this time frame was about whether or not there was an impact on the campaign.”
2018 story about hush money to Stormy Daniels: Prosecutors showed the jury and the court the Wall Street Journal story from 2018 about the hush money payment.
- Hicks said she was not the White House official quoted in the story.
- She said Trump told her about the payment after Cohen told the New York Times that he had, in fact, made the payment without Trump’s knowledge.
- The idea that Cohen made the $130,000 payment on his own “would be out of character for Michael,” she testified.
Cross-examination: When she returned to the stand, she told Bove that she felt she had Trump’s “trust and respect.”
- She testified that Cohen tried to “insert himself” into the 2016 presidential campaign even as he “wasn’t supposed to be on the campaign in any official capacity.” The attorney “wasn’t looped in on the day-to-day of campaign strategy,” but he would go “rogue” and take actions that were unauthorized by Trump’s team, frustrating the campaign, she added.
- In relation to WSJ’s November 4, 2016, story, she also told the defense that Trump didn’t want his family to be hurt or embarrassed by what was happening on the campaign trail.