Will Trump loyalist Hope Hicks' Jan. 6 testimony incriminate the former president?
She has always been one of Donald Trump’s most all-knowing and loyal confidantes. But the Jan. 6 committee got former top White House advisor Hope Hicks on record incriminating the former president.
More is likely to come out about that as early as Wednesday, when the committee is expected to release its long-awaited final report into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and foment an assault on the Capitol based on false claims of voter fraud. And it will begin making public the transcripts of its interviews with as many as 1,000 witnesses – including Hicks – done over the course of its exhaustive 18-month probe.
But based on what the committee has revealed already, what Hicks said about Trump is likely to be damning, and potentially devastating to him, both in the court of public opinion and a court of law should he ever be prosecuted, according to former prosecutors and legal experts.
The House panel voted Monday to refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on charges of trying to incite an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States and other alleged crimes. At that meeting it also revealed how Hicks, behind closed doors, criticized her former boss for refusing to acknowledge he’d lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump, she also testified, ignored her repeated pleas to tell his supporters to avoid violence in the run-up to the mob attack on America’s seat of democracy.
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“I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy,” Hicks said in videotaped testimony that was displayed on a huge screen towering over the packed hearing room Monday. Asked how Trump responded, Hicks replied, “He said something along the lines of nobody will care about my legacy if I lose, so that won't matter. The only thing that matters is winning.”
The committee also revealed other details from Hicks’ Oct. 25 testimony Monday in a 160-page executive summary of its investigation.
“The government just frowns on people getting together, planning and then taking some kind of step toward breaking the law. Just the agreement in and of itself is against the law,” said Roscoe Howard, Jr., a former federal prosecutor and U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. “So I would say that she’s tremendously significant, mainly because she was an insider who was close enough to listen to the conversations like that.”
Why Hicks’ testimony matters
Hicks ended up being perhaps the one advisor Trump relied on the most as he rose from dark horse Republican presidential candidate in 2016 to one of the most divisive occupants of the White House in modern American history. She left her job as White House communications director in 2018 for a job at 21st Century Fox in Los Angeles.
"She is as smart and thoughtful as they come, a truly great person," Trump said in a statement at the time. She returned two years later as counselor to the president, reporting to senior White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and was there for most, if not all, key moments of his presidency, campaign for reelection – and the Capitol riot.
And while Trump hasn’t hesitated to turn on other top aides who have criticized him, he's been historically reluctant to say anything bad about Hicks. But she abruptly resigned just six days after Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump summoned his supporters to Washington, riled them up and sent them marching on the U.S. Capitol to fight Congress’ certification of Biden’s electoral victory.
More: Hope Hicks, former White House aide to Trump, meets with House Jan. 6 panel, reports say
Hicks told associates that her departure was not in response to Trump’s role in the insurrection, Bloomberg and other media reported at the time. But her proximity to the president before and during the events of that day are considered especially critical because they can help show Trump’s state of mind – and whether he knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to subvert democracy, legal and political analysts said.
“The significance of Hope Hicks’ testimony to the (Jan. 6) committee cannot be overlooked," said Stephanie Grisham, a Trump White House press secretary and communications director who worked closely with Hicks. "Next to Dan Scavino, she was Trump’s most trusted aide and one of the only people he listened to. Her constant proximity to the president makes her not just valuable as a witness, but vital.”
"From a sedition standpoint, the whole idea is were you trying to keep our government from functioning as a democracy? It's not a whole lot more complicated than that," Howard told USA TODAY. "And the fact that they've got (Hicks) on tape, from a prosecutor's standpoint, it doesn't really get any better than that – unless somebody has videotape (from Jan. 6), which I doubt."
What did Hicks tell the committee?
Several books already have reported on Hicks’ interactions with Trump before, during and after Jan. 6, 2021, including that she told him that he’d lost the election and not to fight it anymore. But her comments to the committee mark the first time the public has heard from Hicks in her own words about the attack and seen videotape of her testimony.
The committee also revealed that Hicks texted with another White House official that she had “suggested several times” that Trump call on his supporters to remain peaceful on and before Jan. 6, 2021, “and he refused.”
Hicks’ testimony was important, legal analyst and former acting U.S. solicitor general Neal Katyal said, because it bolsters the committee’s assertion that Trump knew he was unleashing a potentially deadly mob on the Capitol. “He refused to talk about the need for nonviolence. I think that tells you all you need to know,” Katyal said on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell" after Monday's hearing. “Call it premeditation, call it criminal intent, the House committee’s evidence here is very strong.”
Hicks also had a visceral reaction to Trump’s tweet the afternoon of the riot attacking Vice President Mike Pence at the very time a mob at the Capitol was hunting him down. She texted a colleague that night to say, "Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him," according to the committee's summary report.
More: Hope Hicks, former Trump aide, didn't answer 155 questions during testimony. Here are some of them
What else might come out from Hicks’ testimony?
No one can say for sure, but it’s clear that Hicks had a lot to say. One footnote to the committee’s investigative summary shows that Hicks’ interview with investigators was long enough to generate at least 110 pages of transcribed comments. That report also disclosed that the committee has text messages between Hicks and White House official Hogan Gidley from Jan. 6, 2021, and other text messages between her and Julie Radford, chief of staff to Trump daughter and White House aide Ivanka Trump.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hope Hicks' January 6 committee testimony could be damning for Trump
