Former Trump adviser recounts 2016 campaign scare over Access Hollywood Tape | News, Sports, Jobs

FILE – Hope Hicks, former White House communications director, arrives to meet with the House Intelligence Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 27, 2018. Prosecutors say Hicks spoke by telephone with the former President Donald Trump during a frantic effort to maintain the allegations. of his marital infidelity to the press after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape leaked weeks before the 2016 election. In the tape dating from 2005, Trump bragged about kidnapping women without permission. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

NEW YORK — Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was marked by concern about the potential political damage caused by a tape showing Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women without their permission, Hope Hicks, a senior adviser to the president, testified Friday. Trump's long-standing statement during his secret trial.

Hicks, a former White House official, was forced to testify by prosecutors, who hope his remarks will bolster their argument that the outcry over the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape rushed Trump's lawyer out of office. time to pay porn actor Stormy Daniels to bury a negative. a story that could jeopardize his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election.

Once one of Trump's closest confidants, Hicks gave jurors a glimpse of the chaotic fallout from the tape's release just days before a crucial debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton. Hicks described being stunned and huddling with other Trump advisers after learning about the tape from the Washington Post reporter who broke the story. Hicks forwarded the reporter's request to campaign management with a recommendation to “deny, deny, deny,” Hicks said.

“I had a feeling this was going to be a huge story and that it was going to dominate the news cycle over the next few days,” Hicks testified. “It was a damaging development.”

She added: “It was just pulling us back in a way that was going to be difficult to overcome. »

Prosecutors used his testimony to bolster their case alleging that Trump worked to prevent damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public as part of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg sought to make that connection not only to secure a conviction, but also to persuade the public of the importance of the case, which could be the only one of four lawsuits against Trump to go to trial this year .

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the affair an attempt to damage his bid to win back the White House in November. The defense sought to show that Trump was trying to protect his reputation and his family — not his campaign — by burying embarrassing stories about his personal life.

Under questioning by Trump's attorney, Hicks told jurors that Trump was worried about the tape's effect on his family.

“I don’t think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed by anything that happened during the campaign,” she said.

Hicks' closeness to Trump over the years has made her a figure of interest to both congressional and criminal investigators, who have repeatedly sought her testimony on topics ranging from election interference to Russia to Trump's electoral defeat and the subsequent January 6, 2021. riot at the US Capitol.

She seemed reluctant to be in the courtroom, taking a deep breath as she approached the microphone and acknowledging that she was “really nervous.” She later began crying on the witness stand when Trump lawyer Emil Bove began asking her to think about her time at the Trump Organization before Trump invited her to his 2016 campaign.

Referring to her former boss as “Mr. Trump,” she told the court that she last communicated with him in the summer or fall of 2022. Although she no longer does Part of Trump's inner circle, Hicks spoke highly of the former president as the prosecutor began questioning him about his background.

She talked about how the political storm that followed the release of the tape was so intense that it knocked a real storm out of the headlines. Before the tape was made public, the news was dominated by a Category 4 hurricane heading toward the East Coast.

“I don’t think anyone remembers” where that hurricane hit, Hicks told jurors.

Hurricane Matthew, which hit Haiti and Cuba as a Category 4 storm, made landfall in South Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane on October 8, the day after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape .

Following the release of the tape, she asked Michael Cohen, then Trump's lawyer, to track down a rumor about another potentially damaging tape. Hicks said she wanted to be proactive in searching for the alleged tape because she didn't want anyone to be “blindsided.” In the end there was none.

Then, four days before the 2016 election, Hicks said she received a request for comment from a Wall Street Journal reporter regarding an upcoming story about American Media Inc. purchasing the rights to the former model's story Playboy's Karen McDougal that she had an affair with Trump for years. earlier. Trump denies these allegations.

Hicks remembers contacting Jared Kushner in the hope that he could use his connections with Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Journal's parent company, to help delay the story. Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, told him he probably wouldn't be able to reach Murdoch in time, Hicks testified.

Testimony will resume Monday. The case could last another month or more.

Prosecutors spent the week using detailed testimony about meetings, email exchanges, business transactions and bank accounts to bolster their case charging Trump with 34 counts of falsifying the Trump Organization's internal business records . They set the stage for the crucial testimony of Cohen, who paid Daniels $130,000 for his silence before going to prison for his hush money scheme.

One of the most key pieces of evidence disclosed to jurors this week was a recording of a meeting between Trump and Cohen shortly before the 2016 election, in which they discussed a plan to buy the rights of McDougal's story to the National Enquirer so that this would never be possible. to go out. The tabloid had already bought McDougal's story to bury it in Trump's name.

At one point, Trump can be heard saying, “What do we have to pay for this?” One hour fifty?

In a victory for Trump as court ended for the week, Judge Juan M. Merchan denied a request from prosecutors to have Trump, if he chose to testify, be held in contempt of court for violations of the order of silence in the case.

Merchan said allowing that would be “so prejudicial that it would be very, very difficult for the jury to look past that.”

Trump paid his $9,000 fine this week for violating the silence order that bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the case.

His lawyer, Todd Blanche, told the judge Friday that they are appealing the finding that Trump violated the gag order. Blanche said they particularly disagreed with sanctions for so-called rebroadcasts — instances where Trump shared someone else's message with his supporters.

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