1 of 4 | Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he arrives for his trial at Manhattan criminal court in New York on Monday. Pool Photo by Brendan McDermid/UPI | License Photo
Week four of former president Donald Trump’s hush-money trial was set to get underway Monday with no advance posting of whom the prosecution will put on the stand to follow on from former White House communications director Hope Hicks.
Trump’s top communications director from 2015 to 2018, Hicks cried in testimony Friday as she recalled her boss’ reaction when news broke in 2018 of an alleged hush-money payment to cover up an alleged affair with porn film actress Stormy Daniels was that it was preferable to having negative press during his 2016 campaign run. Advertisement
“He wanted to know how it was playing, and just my thoughts and opinion about this story versus having a different kind of story before the election had Mr. Cohen not made that payment,” said Hicks, the first witness from Trump’s inner circle to enter the witness box.
“I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
However, Hicks appeared to undercut the idea that the primary motivation behind Trump’s alleged actions was an illegal bid to influence the election — the whole premise of the prosecution’s case — by going on to testify that Trump was equally concerned about keeping news stories about affairs from wife, Melania Trump. Advertisement
Hicks related how when, four days before the 2016 election, a story hit about an alleged $150,000 payment by the National Enquirer to Playboy model Karen McDougal to cover up an alleged affair with the former president, Trump instructed staff to hide the newspapers.
“He was concerned about how it would be viewed by his wife, and he wanted me to make sure that the newspapers weren’t delivered to his residence that morning,” she said.
Trump was also keen to avoid situations that would cause “anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed”, she said.
Earlier in the session, Hicks also testified about the chaos triggered by The Washington Post’s October 2016 revelation of the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump boasts about groping women with impunity.
She told jurors she was “very concerned” when The Washington Post first contacted her for comment.
“Everyone was just absorbing the shock of it,” Hicks said adding that their initial response was “deny, deny, deny.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up $130,000 paid to his former lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for a paying off Daniels to keep quiet about sex with Trump. Advertisement
Trump denies ever having had sexual relations with Daniels.
