Hope Hicks — who served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and held multiple senior level roles in the White House — is expected to testify in Trump’s Manhattan hush money trial, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Hicks met with the Manhattan district attorney’s office in March 2023, before Trump was indicted for allegedly falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
She no longer works for Trump.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment related to a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to Daniels just days before the 2016 presidential election.
Hicks was coordinating with Trump in the weeks ahead of the election as his aides and advisers attempted to silence long-denied allegations of his affair with Stormy Daniels, and keep the story from becoming public, according to court records from a federal investigation.
Hicks briefly attended an August 2015 meeting in Trump Tower where Former American Media Inc. chief executive David Pecker vowed to serve as the Trump campaign’s “eyes and ears” for negative stories.
Pecker testified that Hicks did not participate in the meeting and left before the three discussed the scheme in detail.
“She was in and out,” Pecker said.
Former American Media Inc. chief executive David Pecker testified during trial about a March 2018 phone call with White House officials Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who he said encouraged him to extend AMI’s contract with Playboy model Karen McDougal.
McDougal has alleged that she had a 10-month affair with Donald Trump in 2006 and 2007, which he has denied. AMI paid McDougal $150,000, two magazine cover stories and multiple articles published under her byline — in exchange for her not speaking out about the affair, according to prosecutors. “I wanted to extend the contract so she would not go out and give any other interviews,” Pecker said. According to Pecker, both Hicks and Sanders “thought it was a good idea.”
During her time in the Trump White House, Hicks, one of Trump’s closest and most trusted advisers, first served as communications director and then assistant to the president and counsellor. Between her stints in the White House, she served as the head of communications for the Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News.
Before joining the Trump campaign in 2015, she worked for the Trump Organization heading up communications and a communications consulting company.
Hicks was named to Forbes’ “30 under 30” in 2017 and was the youngest person to lead a White House communications team.
