NEW YORK — Ex-White House communications director Hope Hicks visited the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday as prosecutors’ criminal probe into the former president intensifies.
The Daily News spotted the longtime Trump aide leaving the office with her lawyer at around 4:50 p.m. She rushed into a waiting SUV and declined to take questions.
Hicks is the latest witness to meet with prosecutors as their long-running probe into Trump ramps up. Prosecutors are presenting evidence to a grand jury believed to be focused on the infamous hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Michael Cohen went to federal prison for the $130,000 payment to Daniels. He said Trump directed it and paid him back with interest in installments through his bank account and business. Cohen’s cooperating and expects to testify soon before the grand jury.
How the payback was classified could land Trump in hot water. To charge him with a felony for falsely classifying it to the tax man, the DA must find a backup crime — like if the payment was made for political reasons, sources told The News. The legal theory that it would hinge on has no precedent.
Hicks was described in an FBI agent’s affidavit in Cohen’s federal case as being involved in the effort to bury Daniels’ allegations. At the time, she was Trump’s campaign spokeswoman. She denied knowing anything about it when she testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 2019.
It’s unclear whether prosecutors have called Hicks to testify or intend to. Her lawyer Bob Trout declined to comment. DA Alvin Bragg’s spokeswoman Danielle Filson had no comment.
When she testified at her former lawyer Michael Avenatti’s unrelated trial last year, Daniels said she wouldn’t describe her 2006 sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament as romantic.
“I don’t consider getting cornered coming out of a bathroom to be an affair.”
