Hope Hicks says Trump is a "hard worker" who ran his company "like a small family business"

Hope Hicks, the former Trump aide testifying in his criminal trial, has said that spoke with the former president and his fixer, Michael Cohen, the day they found out that adult film star Stormy Daniels wanted money for her story. 

In court Friday, Matthew Colangelo began by asking Hicks to testify about her participation in key meetings as a former communications specialist. She acknowledged that she frequented Trump’s office and taking part in said meetings, describing her former boss as “a very good multitasker and a very hard worker," The Washington Post reported.

Hicks, in her Friday testimony, went on to say that Trump ran his company “like a small family business.” While that was intended as praise, it could also help the prosecution, which is seeking to portray Trump as someone who played a key role in the alleged hush payment scheme at the heart of his Manhattan trial.

“Everybody that works there in some sense reports to Mr. Trump,” Hicks said of the Trump organization.

The New York Times reported that Trump's eyes were "glued onto Hicks" as she testified, the often tired former president the "most alert" he's been all trial. But, the Times noted, the flattery could come at a cost: “Hicks can praise him while harming him in the same breath."

Hicks' praise for her former boss on Friday also stood in contrast to what she was saying privately after the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to text messages previously obtained by congressional investigators. "I'm so mad and upset," she texted a colleague. "We all look like domestic terrorists now."