Hope Hicks reveals she was at the center of Trump’s 2016 damage control

NEW YORK – “It was a crisis. »

That was the consensus among top Trump campaign aides on October 7, 2016, after leaving a conference room at Trump Tower, where the presidential candidate’s debate preparation session was taking place. ‘era. There was to be a meeting on a more pressing matter.

A Washington Post reporter had informed the campaign that in two hours the paper planned to release what became known as the “Access Hollywood” tape, a scandal that nearly ended Trump’s first run for office. presidency, one month before election day.

Hope Hicks, who received the reporter’s email, spoke Friday at former President Trump’s secret trial in New York to detail her efforts to quell the chaos that followed, as well as the revelations about the payments secrets carried out to keep two women silent. alleged connections with the business mogul.

A fixture in Trump’s inner orbit who served as his press secretary at the time, Hicks’ role in shaping media narratives put her at the center of everything — making her trial testimony crucial for the Manhattan District Attorney’s case.

Hicks was one of the first aides to work on Trump’s campaign in 2016 and quickly became one of his most trusted advisers. She served in the Trump White House for two separate terms, leaving in early 2018 and eventually joining Fox’s corporate team before returning to the White House in early 2020 as a senior advisor.

She previously appeared before a Washington grand jury as special counsel Jack Smith probed whether Trump knew he lost the 2020 election. Trump has since been indicted in Washington, D.C., for his attempts to stay in power after the 2020 elections.

Hicks has not been part of Trump’s political circle since the end of his first term and has no role in his 2024 campaign, although people familiar with the matter have said there is no tension between the two .

Hicks appeared nervous about being on the stand, occasionally running her hand through her hair and playing with her earrings. Moments after indicating she doubted an explanation for the hush-money payment Trump told her about years ago, Hicks broke down in tears.

But before prosecutors questioned Hicks about the hush money, much of his testimony concerned the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, which marked a turning point in Trump’s 2016 campaign and sparked widespread speculation that the business magnate’s political ambitions had reached their end.

On the tape, Trump is heard boasting about grabbing women inappropriately and apparently without their consent, off-the-cuff remarks captured on the set of a soap opera more than 10 years earlier.

“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I’m not even waiting,” he says in the tape. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab them by the f—-. You can do anything.”

“I was worried,” Hicks said Friday of when she learned of the tape. “I was very anxious.”

Now the former president is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with reimbursements his then-fixer received after paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep the silence on her alleged affair with Trump. Trump, who denies the affair, has pleaded not guilty.

Although the tape is not at the center of the case, the prosecutor’s office is trying to link the fallout from Trump’s remarks on the matter to Daniels’ payment as part of efforts to portray Trump’s charges as a criminal conspiracy aimed at corruptly influencing the 2016 elections.

Hicks learned in detail about the secret payments made to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

In discussing McDougal’s payment, Hicks testified that Trump expressed concern about the reaction of his wife, Melania, reinforcing one of Trump’s defenses in the case: that the motivation behind the hush money was to avoiding embarrassment for Trump’s family, rather than preserving his political fortunes ahead of the election.

But at other times, Hicks gave key testimony in the election conspiracy charge. She testified about a conversation she had with Trump in which he indicated that ex-fixer Michael Cohen made the payment to Daniels out of the goodness of his heart, a characterization she questioned.

Hicks added that Trump told him it was a good thing that the Daniels payment story made waves after he had already won the 2016 election, just before it collapsed at the rod.

Prosecutors say the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” taping upped the ante for letting Daniels’ salacious allegations surface publicly just before Election Day, attempting to convince jurors that the hush money deal was part of a larger criminal conspiracy.

Hicks had been brought up earlier in the trial during testimony from former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who said she was in the room when Pecker met with Trump to initially establish a deal to “catch and kill » salacious stories about the candidate at the time. so that they never surface in the news.

But one of Hicks’ most compelling testimonies was recounting how she managed to do damage control in the two hours between when the campaign was informed of the “Access Hollywood” tape by the Post and publication of the story.

Hicks said two strategies emerged as she forwarded the Post’s request for comment to four senior campaign aides, including Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.

“You have to listen to the tape to be sure” that it is accurate, or “deny, deny, deny.”

“Strategy number two was going to be a little more difficult,” Hicks said after realizing the reporter had provided a transcript of the tape.

Hicks then headed to a conference room at Trump Tower, she said, where Trump was leading a debate preparation session for his then-rival Hillary Clinton.

Hicks said she gestured for a few aides to join her outside so as not to disrupt preparations, and they huddled together to figure out what to do.

“Everyone was just absorbing the shock,” Hicks testified.

Trump, who could see them through the conference room windows, finally realized there was a problem and asked his aides to come back inside and explain the situation, Hicks said.

When confronted with the request for comment, Trump told Hicks that it “didn’t sound like something he would say,” she testified. But the first time he saw the tape, he was shocked, she said. He later told her that the remarks were “pretty standard stuff for two guys talking.”

After a weekend filled with Republicans scrambling to figure out what to do, including what would happen if Trump ended his candidacy this late in the election cycle, the former reality TV host managed to shift the focus from the media to his efforts to bring Clinton’s sexual abuse accusers to justice. her husband, former President Clinton, in a VIP box at the debate he was preparing for when the “Access Hollywood” tape was leaked.

Trump defeated Clinton in the general election a month later.

Brett Samuels contributed.