Former White House communications director Hope Hicks will testify in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, NBC News reports.
Hicks, who met with prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office during their investigation last year, will testify as a witness for the prosecution when the criminal trial begins later this month.
Manhattan prosecutors is accusing Trump of falsifying business records relating to a hush money payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Hicks, who was the Trump campaign press secretary at the time, was reportedly involved in negotiations to silence Daniels.
“I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then Clifford’s attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign,” an FBI agent who’d been investigating Cohen said in an affidavit.
“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 from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story,” the agent said.
Hicks testified before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee in 2019 that she was not involved with the hush money discussions and only became aware of the allegations in November 2016.
But, phone records show she called Cohen on October 8, 2016, for the first time in weeks. Trump joined that call and the trio spoke for four minutes. It was the same day that Stormy Daniels came forward to the National Enquirer and said that she was ready to share her story.
Hicks was also on another call with Cohen on the day he paid the $130,000.
Trump’s hush money trial is set to begin on April 15.
