Following last week’s reported Kellyanne Conway appearance at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, we have learned that former Donald Trump aide Hope Hicks reportedly has met with DA Alvin Bragg’s team as well. While it’s unclear exactly how a Hicks meeting would affect a potential hush money case against the former president, it’s still an important step ahead of any criminal charges that come.
That’s because, like with former Trump adviser Conway, prosecutors need to know what Hicks would say on the stand. Specifically, Manhattan prosecutors would want to know from Hicks what inside knowledge she has — and doesn’t have — about the hush payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to conceal an affair Trump allegedly had with Daniels (which he has denied).
As for Hicks’ role in the matter, The New York Times recounted Monday:
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. [Michael] 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.
Obviously, a prosecutor considering charges would want to know what Hicks’ participation in such a phone call and any other communications entailed. That would include, among other things, whatever Trump might have said that shows his knowledge of the payment by, and reimbursement to, former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen (who was federally charged and convicted in the Southern District of New York even though, inexplicably, Trump hasn’t been charged federally).
As Harry Litman noted on the show Monday, you don’t put someone in the grand jury until you know exactly what they’re…
Read the full article here
