Hope Hicks, who previously served as a counselor to former President Donald Trump, experienced an emotional outburst during her testimony in District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money case in Manhattan.
Hicks began working for Trump shortly after graduating from college and maintained a lengthy professional relationship with him.
She had previously been summoned to testify before the House January 6 Committee and is now involved in a case concerning alleged payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
During her court appearance, Hicks had an emotional breakdown, leading Judge Juan Merchan to call for a brief recess.
Following her testimony for the prosecution, defense attorney Emil Bove cross-examined her, resulting in her quickly becoming overwhelmed, as reported by MSNBC.
“I want to talk to you about your time at the Trump Organization,” the attorney said to Hicks before she started to get emotional.
“Sorry about that,” she said after returning to the witness stand.
“No, it’s okay,” the attorney for the former president said.
“Absolutely…I don’t think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed about anything on the campaign. He wanted them to be proud of him,” Hicks testified.
Her testimony was an “epic miscalculation that backfired spectacularly” on the prosecution, Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said.
“The account by Hicks demolishes District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s primary claim against Trump that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence with the intent to benefit his campaign and, thereby, influence the election by ‘unlawful means.’ To the contrary, it nicely corroborates the findings of a federal investigation that no crimes were committed, or campaign finance laws broken because there was another purpose for the non-disclosure agreement that Daniels signed,” he said.
“Like the prosecution witnesses before her, Hicks disparaged Bragg’s planned star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s one-time personal lawyer. ‘He used to like to call himself Mr. Fix-It, but it was only because he first broke it.’ Ouch!
“But that denigrating remark is tame compared to the other derisive comments that have been leveled thus far at the insufferable Cohen, who is a convicted liar who went to prison,” he said.
“Hicks confirmed that Trump was aware that Cohen paid off Daniels to end what can fairly be described as aggressive blackmail demands.
“When the election drew near, Daniels ratcheted up her greedy scheme to profit from Trump by threatening to go public about a supposed affair, which he denied.
“Not incidentally, she renounced the purported tryst.
“Then, in a head-spinning maneuver, she recanted her repudiation,” the analyst said.
Michael Avenatti, her former lawyer, took to social media to say:
“Keith Davidson is lying,” he said on Thursday.
“After I confronted her w/ her own text msgs, Daniels admitted to me in early 2019 that she & Davidson had extorted Trump in Oct. 2016 – it was a shakedown.
“This was one of the many reasons I fired her as a client in Feb. 2019,” he said.
Davidson served as the legal representative for both Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
He successfully negotiated confidential agreements and financial settlements for both individuals.
Jarrett questioned the presence of any criminal activity in this case, as it is important to note that confidentiality agreements are not illegal.
“The payments made were not illegal. Non-disclosure contracts in exchange for silence are not unlawful. Killing negative stories violates no statutes. More to the point, it is not a crime for Trump to know about a non-crime. That would be a senseless syllogism,” the legal analyst said.
“So, where exactly is the crime? To quote a memorable line from ‘Shakespeare In Love,’ ‘I don’t know…it’s a mystery!’” he said.
“There is, however, no mystery behind Alvin Bragg’s politically driven prosecution of Trump. Out of thin air, the DA conjured up expired misdemeanors, dumped them into a Cuisinart, tossed in a garbage state statute that doesn’t apply to a federal election, hit the “puree” button, and then poured out an absurd concoction of faux felonies,” he said.
