Hope Hicks, escape artist

She immediately caught the eye of the campaign press corps when at age 26 in 2015, Hope Hicks became Donald Trump’s press secretary on his campaign for the presidency.  It emerged that she had no experience in politics and had never worked in a political campaign. 

Described as “willowy,” attired in tasteful designer clothes and high heels, she was always at Trump’s side on the campaign, and she was the one who behind the scenes, took dictation for Trump’s tweets and then passed the text of the tweets to someone else to be posted on Twitter.

She was “romantically linked to” Trump’s campaign chairman, Corey Lewandowski, early in the campaign, before Lewandowski attracted unwanted attention by physically pushing a female reporter at a campaign rally and was fired.  In his campaign memoir “Let Trump Be Trump,” Lewandowski said Hicks had a photographic memory and threw this seeming pot-shot at her by describing one of her campaign duties this way:  “When we landed, it was Hope’s job to steam him. ‘Get the machine!’ he’d yell,” Lewandowski wrote. “And Hope would take out the steamer and start steaming Mr. Trump’s suit, while he was wearing it! She’d steam the jacket first and then sit in a chair in front of him and steam his pants.”

After Trump won in 2016 and took office in January of 2017, she became White House communications director.  An article in Town and Country described her office as a “first-floor broom closet that in the past had been assigned to presidential secretaries,” located “steps from the Oval Office.”  Town and Country reported that “Trump would frequently shout for her assistance. ‘Hope!’ he’d scream, ‘Hopey! Hipster! Get in here!’”

In 2018, it all came crashing down around her.  The Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Hope Hicks, the quiet one in Trump’s White House, suddenly feels the glare.”  Hicks was dating Rob Porter, a White House aide who served as Trump’s chief “body man,” accompanying Trump everywhere carrying a brief case said to be filled with important papers.  Then Porter was charged with abusing his two ex-wives, and Hicks “was involved in crafting the widely condemned initial White House defense of him” in which Chief of Staff John Kelly called him “a man of true integrity.” Hicks was told about the abuse by a girlfriend who knew the ex-wives but kept dating Porter anyway and didn’t alert anyone about the allegations.  She was condemned by the National Organization of Women as “an enabler of domestic violence.”

Hicks gave nine hours of testimony to the House Intelligence Committee about alleged Russia collusion in February of 2018.  The next day, the White House told the New York Times that Hicks was planning to resign, which she did in late March.  She went to work almost immediately for Fox News as its chief communications officer and executive vice president.

Hicks was mentioned more than 180 times in the Mueller report on the contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians.  When the report was released in April of 2019, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Hicks again, and she testified in May, claiming executive privilege and refusing to answer questions 155 times about Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation.  Remember, although Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, he found 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Trump himself, but because of Department of Justice policies against indicting a sitting president, declined to charge him with crimes.

In early 2020, Hicks returned to the White House as an aide to Jared Kusher and “counselor” to Trump. She was involved in the decision for Trump during the Black Lives Matter protests to walk through Lafayette Square for a photo op at a church, causing the square to be violently cleared of protesters using riot police and tear gas.

After Trump lost the election in November, Hicks was among a few people in the White House, including Kellyanne Conway, who counseled Trump to “move on.”  The New York Times reported that when Hicks gave Trump her opinion, he said, “Well, Hope doesn’t believe in me.”

“No, I don’t,” Hicks is said to have told him. “Nobody’s convinced me otherwise.”

But Hicks didn’t leave her White House job in November or December.  She hung on right to the end and ended up being subpoenaed by the House January 6 Committee to provide videotaped testimony as well as at least some of her electronic communications surrounding the attack on the Capitol.  While White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided forthcoming testimony to the committee on the actions of both Trump and Mark Meadows, the report of the January 6 Committee released texts from Hicks that showed her worried about one thing and one thing only on that fateful day.

She texted Julie Radford, the former chief of staff to Ivanka Trump that “one day ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys chapter.  And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now. Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked.” In another text, Hicks lamented that Alyssa Farah Griffin, her replacement as White House communications director, who resigned a few weeks after Trump lost in November, “looks like a genius” now.

All of which puts a slightly different spin on the tears that Hicks shed yesterday on the stand, wouldn’t you say?  She got lots of attention for asking “for a moment” to wipe her eyes and get herself together while under cross examination by one of Trump’s lawyers.  But Hope Hicks, the “willowy” former model who managed to escape the Trump White House with her reputation intact not once but twice, looks to have crafted a way to escape her testimony at the Trump trial.  The New Yorker quoted one journalist who was in court on Friday when Hicks appeared to break down: “Come on.  She’s a crisis-communications professional.”  Hicks, who got engaged to Goldman Sachs Jim Donovan last Wednesday, didn’t testify against Trump or for the prosecution.  She testified, and successfully it seems, for Hope Hicks.