Hope Hicks breaks down chaos of Trump’s 2016 campaign during hush money trial

Trump briefly addressed reporters gathered outside the courtroom as he exited for the day.

“I was very interested in what took place today,” Trump said, citing the gag order against him to decline weighing in on Hicks’s testimony.

Trump otherwise railed against the case against him and bemoaned that the U.S. was a “nation in decline.”

— Brett Samuels

The court has adjourned, marking the end of the second week of testimony.

— Zach Schonfeld

Judge Juan Merchan ruled for Trump, declining prosecutors’ request to cross-examine him about the gag order violations.

Merchan said it would be “so prejudicial” for the jury to hear that the judge presiding over this very case had found the defendant in criminal contempt.

“It would be very difficult to look past that,” Merchan said.

— Zach Schonfeld

The judge has dismissed the jury for the day, but before adjourning, the parties are returning to a pending legal dispute.

If Trump takes the stand, prosecutors want to cross-examine him about this week’s ruling finding that the former president violated his gag order nine times.

The judge is now hearing arguments.

— Zach Schonfeld

Hicks was excused from the stand after Trump attorney Emil Bove briefly cross-examined her.

Bove got Hicks to confirm that Michael Cohen was not an official part of the campaign but would repeatedly seek to insert himself in various matters.

And before he wrapped, Bove distanced Hicks from the actual charges in Trump’s case.

“While you were focused on your job at the White House, you didn’t have anything to do with the business records of the Trump Organization 200 miles away, right?” Bove asked.

Hicks responded that she did not.

— Zach Schonfeld

Hicks broke down on the stand as she was testifying about a call she had with Trump, in which he told her that Michael Cohen made the payment to Stormy Daniels out of the goodness of his heart. Hicks appeared to have doubts that Cohen did so with that purpose, calling it “out of character.”

Hicks then went on to say that Trump told her it was better that the Daniels story came out after he had already secured his 2016 presidential win.

Among the prosecutors’ allegations is that Trump attempted to hide the payment to Daniels in order to influence the election in his favor.

Hicks has returned to testify after a short break.

When she emerged back in the courtroom and walked up to the stand, Hicks walked slowly and kept her eyes glued to the ground.

“Sorry about that,” Hicks told Trump attorney Emil Bove after the proceedings resumed

“No, it’s OK,” Bove replied.

Bove is now asking Hicks more about her work at Trump’s company before the 2016 campaign.

— Zach Schonfeld

Hicks broke down on the stand just moments into cross-examination from Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove.

Bove had said he wanted to begin with questions about Hicks’s time working for the Trump Organization, when she suddenly broke into tears and grabbed a tissue.

The judge then excused the jury and Hicks for a break.

— Zach Schonfeld

Just after The Wall Street Journal published its story, days before Election Day in 2016, revealing the hush money deal with Karen McDougal, Trump’s then-fixer, Michael Cohen, didn’t think it would get much traction.

“Lots of innuendos with little fact,” Cohen texted Hicks the evening of Nov. 4.

“Poorly written and I [don’t] see it getting much play,” he wrote in a subsequent message.

Hicks, now on the stand at Trump’s trial nearly eight years later, noted there was “just a little irony there.”

— Zach Schonfeld

Judge Juan Merchan has retaken the bench following the lunch break, and Hope Hicks has returned to the stand.

— Zach Schonfeld

Trump took to social media during the lunch break to rage against the trial, complaining that the allegations at the heart of the case have been litigated in the court of public opinion.

“This isn’t a trial, it’s a political campaign, a witch hunt, just like the highly conflicted and biased judge, Juan Merchan, wanted it to be,” Trump wrote in an all capital letters post on Truth Social.

“These eight year old stories, which came out prior to the 2016 election (the voters have already, and loudly, spoken!), and have nothing to do with this fake case, brought by a crooked, Soros backed New York City D.A., Alvin Bragg, should not have been allowed to be used,” Trump continued.

The post was Trump’s first comments since Hicks took the stand.

— Brett Samuels

The court has adjourned for lunch. Hicks’s testimony will continue later this afternoon.

— Zach Schonfeld

Hicks said she sent Cohen a draft of her response to The Wall Street Journal “to get his input” before responding to the paper’s inquiry regarding efforts to keep McDougal’s story quiet.

Cohen replied: “Instead…say: ‘These accusations are completely untrue and just the latest despicable attempt by the liberal media and the Clinton machine to distract the public from the FBI’s ongoing criminal investigation into Secretary Clinton and her closest associates.’”

But Trump did not want that statement, instead suggesting he craft his own, Hicks said.

— Ella Lee

Hicks testified that during Trump’s 2016 campaign, the candidate either wrote every tweet himself or approved them.

Dan Scavino, the campaign’s director of social media, was the one campaign staffer who was allowed to make posts, but he still needed Trump’s approval, Hicks said.

— Zach Schonfeld

Hicks testified that she learned about ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal on Nov. 4, 2016, via a press inquiry from The Wall Street Journal — just four days before the presidential election.

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels’s name came up a “year prior,” in November 2015, as Trump and his security discussed a celebrity golf tournament years earlier.

She learned about both women on one of Trump’s planes en route to a campaign stop, she said.

— Ella Lee

After reports of Trump’s behavior with women began spilling out, he was concerned his campaign would be harmed, Hicks said.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo asked Hicks whether it was fair to say that, in the months before the 2016 election, Trump was concerned the reports would “hurt his standing with voters.”

“Yes,” Hicks replied.

The admission could help prosecutors make prosecutors’ case to the jury that efforts to suppress two women’s stories of alleged affairs with Trump, which he has denied, were done in aim of helping his odds of winning the White House.

— Ella Lee

Prosecutors have brought up various prominent Republicans who condemned the tape upon its release, including Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Trump appeared to mutter something under his breath when the late McCain’s name came up, turning toward his attorney, Todd Blanche.

McCain and Trump had a tumultuous political relationship while Trump mounted his 2016 campaign and when he entered the White House while the Arizona Republican was serving in the Senate.

— Zach Schonfeld

Hicks testified that Trump believed his remarks on the tape were “pretty standard stuff for two guys chatting.”

In the tape, Trump says: “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the p‑‑‑‑. You can do anything.”

Trump was involved in planning the campaign’s response to the tape, Hicks said.

“He always liked to weigh in on responses,” she said.

— Ella Lee

When confronted with the Post’s comment request about the tape, Trump told Hicks that it “didn’t sound like something he would say,” she testified.

The first time she saw the tape itself, she said she was with Trump.

“Was he upset?” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo asked the former Trump adviser.

“Yes,” she said with a pause. “Yeah, he was.”

She described her reaction as “just a little stunned” and said she had a “good sense” that the story would dominate the news for at least the next “several days.”

It was “kind of pulling us backwards in a way that would be difficult to overcome,” she said, adding that there was a “consensus” that the tape was “damaging” and the situation was “a crisis.”

— Ella Lee

Hicks recalled that she learned about the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape via a request for comment from The Washington Post, which had obtained the recording.

In the tape, Trump is heard bragging about grabbing women inappropriately, seemingly without consent.

Hicks said she forwarded the reporter’s email to other campaign leadership. The email included an explanation of the tape, transcript and three questions asked of the campaign, and the reporter indicated the Post planned to publish the video two hours later.

The subject of the email: “URGENT Wash Post query.”

“I was concerned,” Hicks said of her initial reaction. “I was very concerned.”

She said she forwarded the email to Trump aides Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, David Bossie and Jason Miller.

— Ella Lee

Hicks said she couldn’t remember if she was ever “in and out” of Trump’s office when Pecker was meeting with him.

“I don’t have a recollection of that, but it’s certainly possible,” she said.

However, she did recall being present on phone calls between the two men, including a call in which Trump congratulated Pecker on a “great investigative piece” about 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson.

“Sometimes he would say things like ‘This is Pulitzer worthy,’” Hicks said of Trump, drawing laughter from journalists in the gallery.

In another call, she recalled him “praising some of the reporting” about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was also a presidential candidate, around the time the tabloid reported that Cruz’s father was involved with Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

— Ella Lee

The former president had been keeping his eyes closed for portions of Hicks’s testimony.

But he opened them and looked over at his former aide when she was answering who was responsible for managing messaging during Trump’s successful 2016 campaign.

“Mr. Trump was responsible. He knew what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it,” Hicks said as Trump looked over. “And we were all just following his lead. So, I think that he deserves the credit.”

— Zach Schonfeld

Hicks said that a January 2015 trip to Iowa made it “obviously” clear he was exploring a run for president.

She traveled with him to a few other early states, and “at some point” it became official that he was campaigning for the nation’s highest office.

When Trump first suggested she be his campaign’s press secretary, she said she thought he was “joking.”

“I didn’t take it very seriously,” she said, sometimes facing the jury to explain her answers.

But eventually she had spent so much time on the campaign trail she did assume that role, she said. She said she reported to Trump directly and spoke to him daily.

“He was very involved,” she said of Trump’s role in the campaign’s press strategy.

— Ella Lee

Hicks testified that it wasn’t unusual for her to pop in and out of Trump’s meetings, echoing testimony from earlier in the trial.

Ex-National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified Hicks was “in and out” of a key meeting in August 2015 in which Pecker, Trump and then-Trump fixer Michael Cohen allegedly agreed to shut down bad press about Trump to help his 2016 presidential campaign.

Hicks said that once Trump’s campaign began, her role became “a little bit different.”

— Ella Lee

Hicks said she hasn’t communicated with Trump since either the summer or fall of 2022.

She indicated she is now a communications consultant at her own company, but Trump is not a client.

— Zach Schonfeld

Stephanie Grisham, who served for four years as a spokesperson for then-first lady Melania Trump and for roughly a year as White House press secretary during the Trump administration, weighed in on Hicks taking the stand Friday.

“As a human being & someone who worked w Hicks for 6 years, I feel such anxiety for Hope right now,” Grisham posted on the social platform X.

— Brett Samuels

Hope Hicks, an adviser in Trump’s inner circle as he mounted his 2016 campaign and served as president, is testifying in Trump’s New York criminal trial.

Before the 2016 election — during the time period when the hush money payments at issue in the trial were made — Hicks served as Trump’s campaign press secretary.

Hicks previously gave testimony to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and to special counsel Robert Mueller as he investigated allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Despite maintaining distance from Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign, Hicks has not publicly disavowed the former president.

Though Hicks has denied knowledge of the hush money payments, ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen has said she was likely aware of the transaction, and David Pecker, ex-publisher of the National Enquirer, testified earlier that she was “in and out” of a key meeting where prosecutors say the alleged conspiracy to clear Trump’s path to the White House by quieting bad press was formed.

— Ella Lee

Longstreet was excused from the stand after Trump attorney Todd Blanche cross-examined her briefly, getting her to concede that she doesn’t have independent knowledge about why the former president made any of his social media posts.

— Zach Schonfeld

Prosecutor Becky Mangold concluded her direct examination by having Longstreet, the paralegal, walk through various Trump social media posts.

The jury was shown more tweets Trump issued following the “Access Hollywood” tape, and also saw a more recent Truth Social post in which Trump nicknames Stormy Daniels “Horseface.”

In the final post, the jury saw Trump’s Truth Social post from last year, when he wrote, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Trump leaned forward in his chair to read the posts on his computer monitor.

— Zach Schonfeld

Prosecutors played for jurors Trump’s video apology he recorded after the tape surfaced.

Watch the video here.

— Zach Schonfeld