Hope Hicks denied Thursday that she had misled the House Judiciary Committee about her knowledge of hush money payments to women alleging sexual affairs with President Trump.
Her denial came in the form of a letter from her lawyers to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who had requested that she clarify her testimony after the July release of search warrants from the Michael Cohen probe. The warrant applications alleged that Hicks had spoken to Cohen on the phone twice just before Cohen had phone calls with key figures who helped facilitate the hush money deal with Stormy Daniels.
Hicks’ lawyers said that one of her the phone calls with Cohen on the day in question, Oct. 8, 2016, likely had to do with the rumors of a video tape “involving Mr. Trump in Moscow with Russian prostitutes,” not the hush money payments.
Hicks had previously told the committee, during a closed door interview in June, that she had reached out to Cohen around this time, after the Access Hollywood tape was published, because it was rumored that TMZ had access to the tape allegedly involving Trump and Russian prostitutes.
The rumor that Trump was taped engaged in lewd acts with prostitutes in Russia was circulating via the Christopher Steele dossier, Hicks’ lawyers noted. Its existence has never been proven.
“She believes that her calls with Mr. Cohen that day would have been about reaching out to [TMZ producer] Harvey Levin to see if there was more information about the rumored videotape,” her lawyers said. “Whatever else Mr. Cohen was dealing with that day, his conversations with Ms. Hicks were not about Stormy Daniels or any agreement relating to ‘hush money.'”
The letter said Hicks was standing by her previous claims that she first learned of the payments to Stormy Daniels when reporters reached out to her about them.
“The suggestion that Ms. Hicks obtained information from Mr. Cohen about any arrangement with Stormy Daniels during the campaign, or before it became known to the press, is not true,” the letter said
Read the letter below:
