Hope Hicks, a former White House communications director, expressed concern about Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on Friday.
Hicks stated that the influence of the ‘Access Hollywood’ video with Trump and pornstar Stormy Daniels was a source of concern.
The former White House communication director informed Manhattan prosecutors during the hush money trial that the release of the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016 completely flipped Trump’s presidential campaign.
The possibility for electoral harm from a tape showing the former president boasting about sexually grabbing women without their consent was a major concern for Trump’s 2016 campaign.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the ex-president allegedly paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels via his lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Upon learning about the existence of the audio from the Washington Post reporter on October 7, 2016, almost one month before the election, Hicks expressed shock and huddling with other Trump advisers.
After receiving the reporter’s request, Hicks advised the campaign’s leadership to “deny, deny, deny,” according to her statement.
According to her testimony, she had a strong intuition that this story would be huge and take over the news for a few days.
“This new information was quite harmful.
It would be difficult to recover from this setback, because it was simply dragging us backwards.
She was brought to the stand by prosecutors to bolster their case against Trump, who they claim conspired to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election by trying to thwart unfavorable revelations about his private life.
In what might be the sole one of four Trump prosecutions to go to trial this year, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has endeavored to prove that connection in order to convince the public of the case’s importance and, perhaps, to secure a conviction.
Hicks informed the jury that Trump had denied knowing about Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels to silence her about her sexual encounter claims with Trump.
Trump realized it was wise to keep Daniels’ narrative under wraps, according to her, because “it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.”
Hicks said that all of their conversations at the time were filtered through the campaign’s perspective when asked whether Trump was concerned about the story’s effect on the campaign.
She claimed that Trump frequently asked her, “How is it playing?” to determine the reception of his speeches, appearances, and policies among the general public.