A New York lawyer said that Hope Hicks’ testimony in the hush money trial against Donald Trump has made it harder for Trump to say that he was hiding a possible scandal from his wife.
As the former White House communications director testified against Trump on Friday, Janos Marton spoke out against her. She broke down in tears while testifying. Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, says the former president had an affair with her. The former president denies the claims, but says he was trying to hide Daniels’ claims from his wife, Melania, not from voters.
“For the jury, the optics of the campaign press secretary being involved at all makes it harder to claim the payoff was related to some personal matter,” he added.
Marton told us that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office “will use Hope Hicks’ testimony as further evidence that the Stormy Daniels payment was done to head off what would have been a devastating political scandal days before the 2016 election – complete with emails and texts as evidence.”
He did say, though, that she doesn’t know much about the funds and is a “non-cooperating” witness, which means she isn’t being charged with a crime and isn’t being forced to give all the information.
“Importantly, Hicks is a non-cooperating witness, and she’s previously testified in Congress that she was unaware of the deal itself, so the value of her testimony in connecting Trump to a crime will be limited,” he added.
Hicks talked more about how the Stormy Daniels claims affected Trump’s 2016 campaign and his time in office than about the specifics of the deal itself.
Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, told Newsweek that Hicks’s job as head of communications for the White House gives her evidence more weight.
“On the one hand, Hicks’ statement is a copy of Pecker’s and doesn’t add much new information. In contrast to Pecker, she was a high-level official in the Trump administration and the 2016 campaign, and she worked for the Trump Organization. This makes her a more reliable witness for the government.
When Trump was in office, Hicks worked full-time for Trump’s real estate business, The Trump Organization. He was a senior White House adviser during that time.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts of changing business records to hide the fact that he paid Daniels and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, hush money. His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, helped him do this. Trump also says he is not having an affair with McDougal.
With 54 more felony charges spread across three other criminal indictments, the former president says that all of his legal problems are part of a Democratic-led “witch hunt” that is “election interference” as he tries to win back the office in November.
In her evidence, Hicks agreed with the prosecutor that Cohen would not have paid the hush money “out of the goodness of his own heart” because he is not “a very kind or selfless person.”
