Former Donald Trump aide expected to testify in New York hush-money trial: Who is Hope Hicks?

The first of four criminal trials against Donald Trump is set to begin 15 April. The former president has been charged with 34 felony counts in connection with hush-money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

On Monday, it was reported that Hope Hicks is expected to testify in the trial, who formed part of Trump’s inner circle when he was campaigning for the White House in 2016. Hicks would go on to serve in the Trump administration until she reportedly lost his trust when she would not go along with Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Who is Hope Hicks?

Hicks, 35, is a public relations executive and political adviser who was hired by the Trump Organization in 2014. An English graduate and former model, she initially worked with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, on promoting her fashion label. Hicks then began to work directly for Donald Trump, who appointed her as press secretary of his presidential campaign in early 2015.

After Trump’s election win over Hillary Clinton in November 2016, Hicks was named as director of strategic communications in the new administration, before becoming interim White House communications director in August 2017, in the wake of Anthony Scaramucci’s ill-fated, 10-day tenure in the role. She then took over the position on a permanent basis the following month.

Then 28, she became the youngest person ever to have been handed the role since it was created during Richard Nixon’s presidency in 1969.

In February 2018, Hicks resigned as White House communications director. The announcement of her departure came a day after she testified to the House Intelligence Committee that she had told “white lies” on Trump’s behalf, but insisted she had never done so about anything relating to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential links between this and the Trump campaign.

After working for 21st Century Fox as executive vice-president and chief communications officer over the next two years, Hicks then returned to the White House in February 2020 as a counselor to the president, reporting to Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.

She quietly left the Trump administration in early January 2021 never getting onboard with the “Big Lie” the former president was pushing. She had advised Trump to move on, that nobody had convinced her that there had been any election fraud. While she left the week after, her departure had been planned before the January 6 riot where Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.

In October 2022 she sat for an interview with the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol. She told investigators that she had told Trump that they “were not seeing evidence of fraud on a scale that would have impacted the outcome of the election,” and that she was concerned pursuing the false claims was “damaging his legacy.”

However, according to her testimony Trump told her: “Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose so that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.”

She has also been called to testify in one of the two federal criminal cases brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith. It was reported that she answered questions in the Washington DC grand jury investigation into Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and involvement in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.

Hicks “totally understands” Trump

Before becoming the Trump campaign’s press secretary in 2015, Hicks had accrued no previous political experience, having worked solely in public relations, at the firm Hiltzik Strategies. Ivanka Trump was one of Hiltzik’s clients; this was the connection that led Hicks to work first for Ivanka, then for Donald.

Indeed, Hicks was described by the New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum in 2016 as “arguably the least credentialed press secretary in the modern history of presidential politics”, with even Trump himself reportedly admitting that she had “as much experience as a coffee cup”.

In a Times profile of Hicks, however, 2016 campaign manager Paul Manaforte said her rapid rise to prominence under the then-presidential hopeful came down to the rapport she had quickly built up with him. “Her most important role is her bond with the candidate,” Manaforte said. “She totally understands him.” Ivanka agreed: “My father makes people earn his trust. She’s earned his trust.”

What is the hush-money case against Trump?

A Manhattan grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg handed down an 34-count indictment accusing Trump of falsifying business records in relation to the hush-money payments made to Daniels. The financial transaction took place in October 2016 where, allegedly at the behest of Trump, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000, which he has testified that his boss repaid him.

The money was meant to keep Daniels from going public about an affair Trump had had with her a decade earlier that could have hurt his campaign just a month before voters cast their ballots.

Cohen spent five months in prison after he pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations related to the payments. Trump was implicated in the scheme, but federal prosecutors never pursued charges as Trump was a sitting president at the time.