Michael Cohen’s hush money texts and recordings come under the microscope

The trial will take a lunch break until 2:15 p.m., when Hicks will continue testifying.

Testimony will end today at 3:45 p.m. due to an altercation by one of the jurors.

Hope Hicks said she worked with Michael Cohen to prepare a statement to be sent in response to an upcoming Wall Street Journal article about Karen McDougal and the National Enquirer.

Hicks initially wrote, “We deny all charges,” but Cohen insisted on a different approach.

“These charges are completely false and are just the latest despicable attempt by the liberal media and the Clinton establishment to distract the public from the FBI’s ongoing criminal investigation into Secretary Clinton and her associates.” Mr. Cohen replied to her. The text of the email shown in court.

show more

Hicks, a former Trump aide, just testified about what happened when she learned the Wall Street Journal was planning to publish an article about Karen McDougal, which included a story about McDougal’s relationship with Trump. It also included details about an Enquirer article he bought about the relationship that was never published.

Ms. Hicks testified that she approached Mr. Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, about the story, hoping that he would put her in touch with Journal executives to delay publication.

Hicks was asked if she had heard of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall, and on November 4, 2016, a Wall Street Journal reporter told her about the former Playboy model and National Enquirer. He recalled that he learned about Mr. McDougall after receiving an inquiry.

Daniels was also mentioned in the same article, and we first heard about the adult film actress a year ago when “The Men on the Plane” wrote about her attendance at a celebrity golf tournament. He added that he was talking with a participant who had played with President Trump.

Hicks asked whether Trump or his campaign knew about McDougal, who Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Rosfeld alleges had an affair with Trump 10 years ago when he was married to first lady Melania Trump. he asked, and testified that the newspaper had bought the article. National Enquirer, but it was never published.

Hicks said she believed she told Trump about the investigation before the president, who was traveling with her at the time, began speaking at a rally in Ohio. She also emailed Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to see if he could contact the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, to buy time for the article to be published. He also said that he had transferred it.

Hope Hicks testified that after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, she spoke on the phone with Michael Cohen about another rumored Trump tape.

She said she asked Cohen to call a friend and ask if there were any such tapes, and if so, when they would be released.

Hope Hicks discussed the political fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tape, including then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “disgusting and unacceptable” comments and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ” He explained his “disgraceful” comments. [and] Horrible. “

Hicks was also asked whether President Trump was not invited to an event hosted by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

“I think we were still making progress,” Hicks said, adding, “But there were programming changes and moves to distance himself from Trump, and Trump decided to do something different.”

Hicks said coverage of President Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape was so intense that it resulted in coverage of the Category 4 hurricane being removed from the news cycle.

“It was intense and dominated, so to speak, most of the coverage for the 36 hours leading up to the debate,” Hicks recalled.

“Back then, we were expecting a Category 4 hurricane, but nobody remembers because the news at the time was ‘all Trump,'” Hicks continued.

Ms. Hicks testified that she had a good feeling that the “Access Hollywood” tape would become a huge story that would dominate the news cycle for at least the next few days.

She said this was a “detrimental development” for the campaign, with many constituencies “complicating what we are trying to achieve and difficult to overcome”.

“The consensus among all of us was that the tape was damaged and this was going to be a crisis,” she said.

Asked by a Washington Post reporter how she reacted when she learned of the existence of the “Access Hollywood” tapes, Hicks said she was “very concerned,” adding that she did not have the tapes, only the transcripts. He added that there is.

She forwarded the reporter’s email to other campaign officials, including Jason Miller, David Bosse, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon, saying, “We need to hear the tapes to deny, deny, deny with conviction.” He said he wrote: She then went to talk to a group of them on the 25th floor of Trump Tower, she said.

She acknowledged that the strategy of denying the conversations on the tapes proved even more difficult once the recordings were made public.

Mr. Hicks received an email from Washington Post journalist David Fahrenhold containing a transcript of the “Access Hollywood” tape, which included Jason Miller, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, and possibly I remember going to another floor to talk about it with Chris Christie and others.

“Everyone was just absorbing the shock,” Ms. Hicks testified, saying she interrupted Mr. Trump’s debate preparation session to discuss the matter with his advisers.

When President Trump read the transcript, he told Hicks, “That’s not what I would say.”