Ex-Trump aide Hicks to talk behind closed doors to U.S. House investigators

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Ex-Trump aide Hicks to talk behind closed doors to U.S. House investigators

By David Morgan

 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he stands next to former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks outside of the Oval Office as he departs the White House for a trip to Cleveland, Ohio, in Washington D.C., U.S., March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hope Hicks, once a close aide and communications director for President Donald Trump, will become on Wednesday the first member of his inner circle to testify to the congressional panel leading a probe into possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

 

Democrats who control the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee believe Hicks can provide important insights into five episodes of potential obstruction by Trump that were described in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

 

They also expect Hicks to shed light on alleged hush payments during the campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Trump, including porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump has denied the affairs.

 

Hicks will be the committee's "first fact witness," said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic lawmaker on the committee, which is planning for a lengthy inquiry. "Having somebody talking about what happened from a personal perspective will be a dramatic debut for the committee," Raskin said.

 

Hicks, who was part of Trump's inner circle during the 2016 campaign and in the first 14 months of his presidency, was subpoenaed to testify and is due to appear at 9 a.m. (1300 GMT) on Wednesday for a closed-door interview that aides said could run well into the evening.

 

The committee will afterward release a transcript of her testimony that is expected to feature prominently in a House Judiciary hearing on Thursday. At that time, lawmakers plan to examine an ABC News interview in which Trump said there would be nothing wrong with accepting damaging information on a U.S. political opponent from a foreign government.

 

Democrats see those comments as an invitation to foreigners to interfere in the 2020 campaign as Trump seeks reelection.

 

Mueller's 448-page report concluded there was insufficient evidence to establish that the Trump campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow in 2016, despite extensive contacts between the campaign and Russia.

 

It is unclear how helpful Hicks, a 30-year-old public relations consultant, will be, given White House efforts to prevent former Trump aides from cooperating with a string of congressional investigations into Trump.

 

The White House is expected to have at least one lawyer in the room with Hicks on Wednesday. The administration has already directed her not to give the committee any documents pertaining to her White House tenure, which ended in March 2018. But she has handed over documents related to the 2016 campaign, raising expectations she will testify on those topics.

 

Hicks' attorney did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

 

TRUMP TOWER MEETING

Democrats want Hicks to discuss a June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in New York, where the Mueller report said campaign officials, including the president's son Donald Trump Jr., met with Russians offering "dirt" on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. A key question is whether Trump himself was aware of the meeting at the time.

 

Aides said the committee's main focus, however, was on alleged obstruction by Trump involving former White House Counsel Don McGahn, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former FBI Director James Comey and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

 

The Mueller report described the president's efforts to impede Mueller’s probe, but stopped short of declaring that he committed a crime.

 

The report recounts how in July 2017, Trump directed Hicks to issue a misleading statement to the press saying only that the Trump Tower meeting had been about Russian adoption.

 

"I would like to know about her involvement in that process and what she personally knew happened," said Ted Lieu, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "She was involved in that whole chain of events, where the president lied about what actually happened."

 

Hicks was also present for two separate episodes that Mueller cited as offering relevant evidence of obstruction after Trump took office: his efforts to get Sessions to redirect the Russia probe away from his 2016 election campaign team, and his attempts to persuade McGahn to deny that Trump asked him to remove Mueller.

 

Lawmakers expect Hicks to decline to answer questions on key topics by citing Trump's executive privilege over the Mueller report. At such points, aides said the committee would try to negotiate an agreement to allow testimony.

 

Experts said lawmakers could also seek a federal court order directing her to testify, an action the full House authorized in a party-line vote last week.

 

House Republicans dismiss the committee probe as political overreach calculated to placate Democratic voters who want Trump impeached.

 

"It just seems like the Democrats are trying to influence the 2020 election and using the committees to do so," said Debbie Lesko, a Republican on the panel.

 

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-06-19

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[Tug]

Wonder how honest she will be?sure is a hottie though lol sorry lady’s don’t mean to offend lol

[blazes]

I'm glad I'm not an American taxpayer.  I mean, all this money and energy directed to shouting "gotcha" to Trump is so petty. 

Compare Trump's so-called "obstruction of justice" with the malfeasance of so many Wall St bankers in the noughties....and did Congress (or just the Dept of Justice) think it worthwhile to pursue the criminality of these bastards?  Not a chance.

 

 

[OneMoreFarang]

What's the point of this. By now everybody knows that Trump should be in jail. But "his" party members, they call themselves the Grand Old Party, who mostly didn't like him before he became president, do now everything to keep him and themselves in power. Impeachment won't work because the spineless GOP will let him get away with his crimes. 

And they pretend to be the democracy leaders of this world - pathetic! 

[OneMoreFarang]

52 minutes ago, Tug said:

Wonder how honest she will be?sure is a hottie though lol sorry lady’s don’t mean to offend lol

Maybe she had Monica's job in the White House.

[Tug]

8 minutes ago, blazes said:

I'm glad I'm not an American taxpayer.  I mean, all this money and energy directed to shouting "gotcha" to Trump is so petty. 

Compare Trump's so-called "obstruction of justice" with the malfeasance of so many Wall St bankers in the noughties....and did Congress (or just the Dept of Justice) think it worthwhile to pursue the criminality of these bastards?  Not a chance.

 

 

Uhhhh what do you think Donald is deregulating?just so you know Donald is enabling those predatory Wall Street types he is obstructing our government any way he can he won’t be around much longer

[Chomper Higgot]

12 minutes ago, blazes said:

I'm glad I'm not an American taxpayer.  I mean, all this money and energy directed to shouting "gotcha" to Trump is so petty. 

Compare Trump's so-called "obstruction of justice" with the malfeasance of so many Wall St bankers in the noughties....and did Congress (or just the Dept of Justice) think it worthwhile to pursue the criminality of these bastards?  Not a chance.

 

 

You perhaps are not aware of the duty Congress has to hold the executive in check or aware of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

 

Criminality in the banking sector is a separate issue.

 

Congress are investigating criminality at the very top of the executive branch. At stake is US Democracy under the Constitution.

 

Look to any dictatorship for an example of where unchecked executive power winds up taking a nation.

 

The process of Congress holding the Executive in check is ugly because it is public, the founding fathers deliberately made sure this process is public.

 

The Executive accountable to the people is a fundamental principle of American democracy and something to be treasured and protected.

[Tug]

Kudos chomper kudos sir

[Boon Mee]

22 minutes ago, blazes said:

I'm glad I'm not an American taxpayer.  I mean, all this money and energy directed to shouting "gotcha" to Trump is so petty. 

Compare Trump's so-called "obstruction of justice" with the malfeasance of so many Wall St bankers in the noughties....and did Congress (or just the Dept of Justice) think it worthwhile to pursue the criminality of these bastards?  Not a chance.

 

 

The mega witch hunt may be over some day - probably not until Trump, his family and all of his aids are dead and buried... 

[Chomper Higgot]

11 minutes ago, Boon Mee said:

The mega witch hunt may be over some day - probably not until Trump, his family and all of his aids are dead and buried... 

It’ll be over when the ‘Witch’s Coven’ are behind bars with all the other ‘witches’ this investigation has exposed and jailed.

 

 

[scottiejohn]

1 hour ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Maybe she had Monica's job in the White House.

As a PR exec she should be used to blowing lots of smoke up peoples........

[IAMHERE]

I'd consider this a 'star chamber'. No transparency at all.

[Sujo]

She will attend but not answer. White House has given her immunity so she does not have to answer anything regarding her time with Trump.

 

It is Trump costing taxpayers millions on obstructing this investigation. Bigly opaque.

[Chomper Higgot]

1 minute ago, Sujo said:

She will attend but not answer. White House has given her immunity so she does not have to answer anything regarding her time with Trump.

 

It is Trump costing taxpayers millions on obstructing this investigation. Bigly opaque.

If she was taking that seriously she wouldn’t show up.

 

Ordering her not to give testimony has failed, look for a distraction attempt by Trump.

[atyclb]

3 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

3 hours ago, Tug said:

Wonder how honest she will be?sure is a hottie though lol sorry lady’s don’t mean to offend lol

Maybe she had Monica's job in the White House.

 

 

 

 

[simple1]

20 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

If she was taking that seriously she wouldn’t show up.

 

Ordering her not to give testimony has failed, look for a distraction attempt by Trump.

She's being blocked by trump admin lawyers claiming exec privilege to answering questions at the hearing. trump claiming transparency - what a terribly cynical individual.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/hope-hicks-testify-house/index.html

[Chomper Higgot]

Well despite showing up with a backing of 5 lawyers and refusing to answer scores of questions Hicks let this out of the bag. 

 

Trump's team were made aware during the period of the Trump campaign of the accusations of the existence of the Pee Pee tape and took active measures to track down the tape and suppress the story. 

 

This is at odds with Trump's later claims that he first heard of the accusations of the existence of the Pee Pee tape from Comey during the period of the transition. 

 

As with all lies Trump tells, it's not so much that he lied, but why he chose to lie about the timeline on this. 

 

Oh and the person Trump and his team got to go try to deal with this was..... Cohen. 

 

 

This is not going away. 

 

 

[Langsuan Man]

The whole hearing was pure theater, they knew damn well she would not testify because she had half a dozen lawyers making objections on every question, at the direction of the White House

 

Which will read very good to the courts:  " Where you worked in the WH " ,  which her lawyers would not allow her to answer are perfect examples of the overreach of this new legal concept put forth by this administration 

 

Which is this whole hair brained idea that there is such a thing as  Presidential Immunity  that prevents anyone from testifying, about anything regarding the president