Hope Hicks, a former top aide to Donald Trump, testified on Friday that he told her in the final days of the 2016 presidential election to deny that he had a sexual relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels.
Pressed
for details about Trump’s decision to deny having relationships with
Daniels or McDougal, Hicks said she couldn’t remember the conversation
about the statement precisely, but that Trump definitely personally
denied the women’s claims.
“I know very clearly that
he stated the denials and wanted to be certain those were included,”
Hicks said. “These are hectic conversations and there’s a lot of people
weighing in.”
Hicks stressed that she was only saying
what she’d been told to say, and that her testimony about it to a grand
jury had been accurate, including about her statement to the newspaper.
“What I told the Wall Street Journal was told to me,” she said.
Here’s Donald Trump returning from the lunch break.
They are continuing to talk about the Wall Street Journal story about McDougal and Daniels.
Hicks says she told the newspaper that it was “absolutely, unequivocally” untrue that Trump had a relationship with Daniels.
Hicks said Trump was the source of that denial.
During the lunch break, Trump took to Truth Social to respond to a
different recording that was played to the jury on Thursday. The tape,
which was secretly recorded by Michael Cohen, had the pair discussing a
payment.
The tape played yesterday and discussed today, while good for
my case, was cut off at the end, in the early stages of something very
positive that I was in the midst of saying. Why was it cut off???
Ex-Trump Aide Hicks Testifies About Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal
Hope Hicks testifies at Trump hush-money trial
Hicks says Access Hollywood tape caused campaign ‘crisis’
Trial is wrapping up third week in Manhattan
We’re back from the lunch break. Here’s a brief summary of Hope Hicks’ first 90 minutes on the witness stand.
Hope Hicks, the former press secretary for Trump 2016’s campaign,
provided an inside account of the crisis that erupted after the
infamous Access Hollywood tape came out weeks before the election. On
that tape, made in 2005, Trump had made vulgar comments about sexually
assaulting women.
She said she was “just a little stunned” and she could see “this
was going to be a massive story” that would dominate the news cycle for
days. But Trump told her it was “just two guys talking privately, just
locker room talk.” Trump soon issued a rare apology on Twitter while
also attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Fresh turmoil erupted just before the election, she said, when
the Wall Street Journal ran an article about how the National Enquirer
bought and buried the story of Trump’s alleged relationship with former
Playboy model Karen McDougal. She said Jared Kushner tried to reach out
to Rupert Murdoch, then executive chairman of News Corp., but he
couldn’t contact him to delay the story.
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