Key Hush-Money Witness Just Exposed Trump’s Biggest Lie Yet
Hope Hicks dished out another doozy against her former boss Donald Trump Friday afternoon.
While testifying on the stand, Hicks—a former Trump Organization employee turned Trump 2016 campaign press secretary turned White House aide—revealed that Trump had been in communication with his former fixer Michael Cohen about hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. The thing is, Cohen had told The New York Times in February 2018 that he had sent the $130,000 payment by his own volition, and out of his own pocket.
Cohen claimed at the time that Trump had no knowledge of the payments. But Hicks recalled Trump saying that Cohen had “felt like it was his job to protect him” and “that’s what he was doing and he did it out of the kindness of his own heart and he never told anybody about it.”
But, when pressed by the prosecution, Hicks confessed that such a charitable act did seem “out of character” for the bombastic attorney.
“I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person,” Hicks said.
Still, even after claiming he had no knowledge of the hush-money payments, Trump understood it was prudent to bury the whole thing before the election.
“Mr. Trump’s opinion was that it was better to be dealing with it now and it would’ve been bad to have that story come out before the election,” she said.
This piece of testimony could prove crucial, according to MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin. Even though Hicks did not call Trump a liar outright, she did reveal that his current claims about the hush-money deal are dubious at best.
Earlier in the day, Hicks described Trump as a boss who was “very involved” and that the communications arm of Trump’s 2016 presidential bid was always “following his lead.”
Hicks continued to say that she had met David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and former CEO of its parent company, American Media Inc., several times, and knew of Pecker as a “friend of Mr. Trump.” She noted that she had been present for Trump’s phone calls with Pecker, including ones about some of the Enquirer’s hit pieces on Trump’s GOP opponents in the 2016 race.
Notably, Hicks specified that although she is testifying in the trial under subpoena, she is paying for her own legal representation and hasn’t spoken to Trump in nearly two years.