The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: hope hicks
'Final Stages': Trump Aide Hicks Meets With Manhattan District Attorney

'Final Stages': Trump Aide Hicks Meets With Manhattan District Attorney

Hope Hicks, the longtime Donald Trump confidante and his former White House counselor, met with the Office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Monday afternoon.

“The appearance of Ms. Hicks, who was seen walking into the Manhattan district attorney’s office in the early afternoon, represents the latest sign that the prosecutors are in the final stages of their investigation,” The New York Times reports, noting she “is at least the seventh witness to meet with prosecutors since the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, convened a grand jury in January to hear evidence in the case.”

Former Trump campaign manager and senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway last week testified before the grand jury, the Times notes.

“Two employees of Mr. Trump’s company have also testified, as have two former executives of The National Enquirer who helped broker the hush-money arrangement, as well as a lawyer for the porn star, Stormy Daniels,” says The Times.

Hicks, who admitted to lying for Donald Trump in sworn testimony to federal investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, had been distraught after the January 6 insurrection. She resigned as counselor to the President on January 12, 2021,

Hicks, it was later reported, on the day of the insurrection texted an aide to Ivanka Trump to say, “we all look like domestic terrorists now.”

“In one day [Trump] ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter,” Hicks said, as NBC News reported. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed.”

Former federal prosecutor Harry Littman on MSNBC Monday evening likened Hicks to Cassidy Hutchinson, suggesting her testimony would be strong and respected.

The Bragg investigation is believed to center around Trump’s payment to Stormy Daniels and other women.

“As the spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, Ms. Hicks was responsible for damage control on a number of issues, a role that has attracted the interest of various investigators over the years. In court records from Mr. Cohen’s federal case, the F.B.I. noted that she participated in a phone call with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen on the same day they learned that Ms. Daniels wanted money for her story. Ms. Hicks also spoke with Mr. Cohen the day after he wired the $130,000 to Ms. Daniels’s lawyer," the Times reported.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

McEntee (Who Couldn’t Get Clearance) And Hicks Returning To White House

McEntee (Who Couldn’t Get Clearance) And Hicks Returning To White House

Donald Trump has rehired John McEntee a former aide who was fired and escorted from the White House grounds nearly two years ago after he failed to pass a background check.

McEntee previously served as Trump’s personal assistant and will return to the White House as head of presidential personnel, the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reported.

It’s unclear if McEntee can pass a background check now. However, he previously failed to obtain security clearance due in part to an online gambling habit, according to a Wall Street Journal report at the time.

McEntee isn’t the only former Trump administration official who is returning.

Hope Hicks, who most recently served as White House communications director before leaving in March 2018, will return to the White House as a counselor to the president and special adviser, the New York Times reported. That’s the same title Kellyanne Conway has.

Hicks left the White House because she was no longer happy in the role, according to a New York Times report at the time.

After her departure, she made headlines during a House investigation into Trump’s abuse of power when she refused to answer even basic questions from members of Congress, including where her desk was in the White House and if she spoke with Trump during lunchtime.

It also came to light after her departure that Hicks was intimately involved in Trump’s effort to pay off porn actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

However, it seems she wasn’t happy after she left the White House to be an executive vice president of Fox.

Hicks moved to Hollywood, where she reportedly felt like a pariah, according to a report from Axios. Hicks even complained, “No one on the cast of Modern Family wants to see me.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Schiff: Court Papers Show Trump Could Have Been Charged

Schiff: Court Papers Show Trump Could Have Been Charged

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

New evidence emerged Thursday related to the campaign finance crime that helped put former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in prison. A judge unsealed court documents in the case, indicating that the investigation has concluded and revealing extensive communications between Cohen, then-candidate Donald Trump, and campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks.

According to House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, the new materials show that were Trump not the president, “he would be criminally charged as Cohen’s co-conspirator.”

“The documents unsealed in the SDNY case against Michael Cohen demonstrate that Donald Trump was intimately involved in devising and executing a corrupt scheme to prevent his affair with Stormy Daniels from being revealed in the final weeks of the 2016 election,” Schiff said. “They show that contrary to his public statements for months afterwards seeking to distance himself from the payments that were made to Daniels, and another woman, Karen McDougal, he authorized the illegal payment of hush money, and coordinated doing so with his attorney, Cohen, and his Press Secretary, Hope Hicks.”

He added: “The inescapable conclusion from all of the public materials available now is that there was ample evidence to charge Donald Trump with the same criminal election law violations for which Michael Cohen pled guilty and is now serving time in prison.”

Schiff noted that Attorney General Bill Barr’s ties to the investigation conducted out of the Southern District of New York should be scrutinized. Barr, Schiff pointed out, has already testified publicly that he believes it is acceptable for the president to shut down an investigation of himself if he thinks it’s “unfair.”

“Barr has demonstrated there are no lengths to which he will not go to protect the President, and I believe it is of paramount importance to determine if he had any involvement in the SDNY’s investigation or sought to bring it to a close,” Schiff said.

Trump has denied having affairs with McDougal and Daniels. He also denied knowing about the hush money, but the evidence strongly suggests — and Cohen has testified — that that is false.

Cohen is serving three years in prison in part for his participation in the hush money payments. Because the payments were intended to help Trump’s chances in the election and were therefore campaign contributions, campaign finance law requires that they should have been formally reported. Instead, Cohen has admitted, they were illegally concealed.

New Documents Indicate Trump Knew About Hush Payments

New Documents Indicate Trump Knew About Hush Payments

Unsealed FBI documents show concrete links between Trump, Michael Cohen, Hope Hicks, and criminal hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

New documents unsealed on Thursday show Trump and his longtime attorney Michael Cohen exchanging a flurry of phone calls in October 2016, around the time Cohen made criminal hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, one of Trump’s mistresses, NBC News reports.

The phone calls, not all of which involved Trump, also included Trump advisers Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway, as well as high-level staff for American Media, the parent company of the National Enquirer.

“Based on the timing of these calls, and the content of the text messages and emails, I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford [Daniels’s legal name] from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story,” one FBI agent wrote.

The “Access Hollywood” tape showed Trump making vulgar comments, including admitting to being a serial sexual predator who would grab women “by the pussy” when he felt like it. In the wake of the scandal, the Trump campaign scrambled to keep at least two of Trump’s mistresses from talking about their affairs with Trump.

Trump has long denied any knowledge of the $130,000 hush money payment Cohen made to purchase Daniels’ silence in the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign. But the new document cast doubt on Trump’s veracity.

In December 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to making the illegal hush money payment. In documents from the Southern District of New York, prosecutors disclosed that Trump was an active participant in the crime, identifying him as “Individual 1.”

“Just to make it crystal clear, New York federal prosecutors concluded that the President of the United States committed a felony,” CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti said at the time.

The unsealed documents provide significant evidence that Trump knew what Cohen was doing.

“It’s impossible to believe, though, that Trump himself was unaware of the Daniels discussion Oct. 8,” the Washington Post‘s Philip Bump wrote Thursday. “The idea that the Daniels issue didn’t come up … defies believability.”

Cohen maintains that he committed criminal acts at the direction of Trump, as he reiterated in a statement he made Thursday from prison.

“As I stated in my open testimony, I and members of the Trump Organization were directed by Mr. Trump to handle the Stormy Daniels’ matter, including making the hush-money payment,” he said.

The unsealed FBI documents seem to give Cohen’s account more credibility than Trump’s denials have.

Published with permission of The American Independent.