Hope Hicks, a former adviser to Donald Trump, took the stand Friday at the former president’s hush money trial and recounted how his 2016 campaign became embroiled in a political firestorm over a recording in which he boasted about grabbing women without their permission.
Hicks, who served as White House communications director, is the first close Trump adviser to testify in the case, which accuses the Republican former president of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by silencing women who claimed to have sexual encounters with him.
Prosecutors contend that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, which emerged just days before a debate, jolted Trump’s campaign and hastened his then-lawyer Michael Cohen’s hush money deal with porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Remember when that was the worst thing he had going against him politically?
Pepperidge Farm remembers
I honestly thought at the time that this would completely derail his bid. I wish I had been right so much.
Ah, the good ole days when we were naive about how terrible our fellow Americans would be