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.
Ukraine’s
Defense Ministry has overhauled its procurement system and boosted
cooperation with NATO eight months after corruption allegations led to a
shakeup in its leadership, a top security official said.
Last September, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy replaced Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov
after accusations of graft in military procurement by subordinates on
his watch prompted public outrage and criticism from wartime allies.
Yuriy Dzhygyr, a deputy defense minister, said a new vetted procurement
system has helped “liquidate corruption risks.”
Russia’s
invasion has “highlighted a number of specific corruption risks in the
department,” Dzhygyr said in a written response to Bloomberg News.
Corruption
remains a concern for Ukraine’s wartime allies as they contribute
weapons and funding to help stave off Russia’s attack. Donors including
the International Monetary Fund and European Union have demanded a raft of anti-graft measures as a central condition for assistance.
Ukraine’s agriculture minister last month became the country’s first
cabinet member to be detained as part of a crackdown tied to corruption
allegations. Last year, Zelenskiy also fired all of the army’s top
draft officers following media reports of graft.
The
sweep has led to a “two-stage mechanism” in procurement at the Defense
Ministry, Dzhygyr said. The ministry sets procurement policies, controls
and checks quality, while two state companies oversee procurement in an
effort to scale back potential risks, he said.
Cleaning Up
The
Kyiv-based ministry also bolstered its involvement in a North Atlantic
Treaty Organization program to help countries advance defense reforms
and meet anti-corruption commitments, the deputy minister said. Dzhygyr,
who consulted on public finance reform in Ukraine and abroad before
joining the ministry in September, said accounting firm KPMG will
evaluate in-house auditing to improve risk management and compliance.
Ukraine ranked
104 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption
Perception Index in 2023, though it climbed up from 116th place the year
before, putting it on par with Brazil and Serbia.
On
the defense budget, Dzhygyr said the cost for Kyiv’s mobilization drive
aimed at bolstering its depleted military ranks will depend on monthly
conscription levels — a factor of incoming aid — and rotation decisions.
He put the cost for maintaining one soldier without weapons at 1.2
million hryvnia ($30,000).
The
ministry is also working with US counterparts as part of an effort to
address concerns over how Ukrainian forces are storing and deploying
Western ammunition, Dzhygyr said, citing six inspections at military
facilities that looked into how certain types of weapons were stored.
“The process is on, it has become a routine now,” Dzhygyr said. “The mechanism is working
Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.
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