Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III interviewed former White House official Hope Hicks three times during his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, mentioning her more than 180 times in his final report.
On Friday, Hicks took the stand in a Manhattan court as part of Donald Trump’s hush money trial, where she described how Trump’s 2016 campaign responded to reports that he had mistreated women.
For Hicks, a former top Trump official and trusted adviser, it represents yet another star turn in a show in which friends say she has no interest in appearing.
In many ways, Hicks, 35, is the Zelig of Trumpworld — a former teenage model and political novice leery of the spotlight who found herself inadvertently launched into the upper echelons of American politics and, then, the Trump White House, after Trump asked her to join his nascent campaign in 2015.
Former Trump officials said Hicks gained the complete trust of Trump and his family. But being in Trump’s inner circle came with risks, inextricably binding her to the former president, his chaos and his controversies.
“I hope we don’t ruin Hope,” Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said shortly after his father won the presidency, according to someone who heard his comments and spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of private remarks.
While she emerged from the administration legally unscathed and with her reputation largely intact, Hicks was also present for nearly every scandal that caught the scrutiny of special counsels, U.S. attorneys, congressional committees, grand juries and federal prosecutors.
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified last week that Hicks was “in and out” of an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower he had with Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen to discuss the tabloid acting as the campaign’s “eyes and ears” and agreeing to kill stories that could damage Trump’s chances of winning the White House.
She was the aide whom The Washington Post contacted in October 2016 about its impending publication of a story about Trump caught bragging in an “Access Hollywood” tape about groping women. Prosecutors say the campaign was deeply concerned about the video’s likely effect on female voters, and it played a key role in the decision to pay money to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels so she would keep silent about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with a married Trump.
Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his reimbursement of Cohen for the payment.
“She was there for everything, so they are going to ask her questions,” said Hogan Gidley, a friend of Hicks’s who served as Trump’s principal deputy press secretary. But, he added, “I know Hope, I talk to Hope, and she wants nothing but the best for Donald Trump and his family.”
Hicks declined to comment for this article. Several people close to her, however, said she is frustrated and angry about being called to testify in the hush money trial and believes it is a waste of everyone’s time and money.
“This feels like something she’s being forced to do,” said one former senior administration official who is close to Hicks, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “She still has warm feelings toward the president and a lot of admiration for him.”
Still, Trump and Hicks have not spoken since late 2022, when Hicks was called before Congress as it investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, people familiar with their relationship said. As in the hush money case, her appearance was compelled by a subpoena — but her testimony caused a fracture in her and Trump’s relationship nonetheless.
Under oath, she recounted to the lawmakers how, in the days after the 2020 election, she had been one of the few people in Trump’s circle to tell him there probably had not been fraud on a scale that would have affected the outcome and urged him to accept his loss and instead focus on his legacy.
But Trump, she testified, “said something along the lines of, you know, ‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose, so that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.’”
The committee also resurfaced text messages of hers from the day of the Capitol attack in which she expressed dismay at Trump and his supporters who had stormed the building. “I’m so upset. Everything we worked for wiped away,” she wrote in one text.
In another, she offered more biting criticism of Trump, writing, “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter.”
After Trump’s presidency ended, he and Hicks stayed in touch, and she visited him several times at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, people familiar with their relationship said. But after her testimony on the Capitol attack, the relationship chilled. Trump’s daughter Ivanka was especially upset about Hicks’s texts, these people said, and the former president felt Hicks had been more critical than was necessary.
One top Trump adviser described the relationship as “cordial.” And most say they do not expect the distance between Hicks and her former boss to be permanent; both have too much fondness for and history with each other.
When a 26-year-old Hicks joined Trump’s presidential campaign in 2015, she was handling marketing and PR at the Trump Organization. At first, when Trump mentioned a new “campaign,” she assumed he was talking about handling a marketing effort for one of his golf courses, and she later joked about not knowing what a caucus was as Trump’s private plane descended into frosty Iowa in early 2016.
But Hicks, the daughter of a partner at a global strategic communications firm, proved a quick study.
When Trump won office, he brought Hicks with him to the White House, insisting her desk be right outside the Oval Office, in a spot typically reserved for a more junior aide. The reason: He wanted her there — all day, every day — to be able to pull her into meetings, seek her opinion or simply gossip.
She was a ubiquitous presence at Trump’s side who — with her relative youth and former modeling pedigree — was regularly underestimated. Yet former colleagues say Hicks had no problem working with more experienced advisers and would sometimes self-deprecatingly quip, “They don’t actually know that I’m the real wonk in this White House.”
“I think that perhaps because she’s glamorous, people underestimated her,” said Marc Short, who had served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. “But she clearly is very savvy, and she certainly had Trump’s confidence.”
Allies and even would-be critics describe her as smart, thoughtful and strategic, with an almost photographic memory — “an amazing talent,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary, said in a statement.
Hicks was also a rare creature in Trump’s orbit who was well-liked by her colleagues and the media alike. One former Trump administration colleague described her as “the glue” between feuding camps.
“She was egoless in a place where traditionally — and not just in the Trump administration — you have a lot of egos,” said Tony Sayegh, who served as a senior adviser at the time.
Most important, she had the complete trust of Trump and his family, who treated her almost like another daughter.
Sayegh, who was instrumental in pushing through Trump’s tax overhaul and planning the 2020 convention, recalled always getting Hicks’s buy-in to ensure a more seamless process.
“There was never an idea that we did not run by Hope first, because we knew that was going to increase the chance of the president agreeing to and approving it,” he said.
On occasions when she did refuse to carry out a directive from the president, it was often less out of a sense of self-preservation and more out of a desire to protect Trump, other former officials said. She would warn, “I think that’s going to hurt you,” recalled one former administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share details of candid conversations.
Hicks left the White House for a time in 2018 — accepting a top communications job at Fox Corp. in Los Angeles — the day after telling the House Intelligence Committee that she sometimes told “white lies” for Trump. At the time, her personal life had become tabloid fodder, and she told confidants she was burned out.
But she returned almost exactly two years later, just in time for the 2020 campaign. In many ways, it is this history — forged during an improbable 2016 campaign and tumultuous presidency — that remains a defining through line of Hicks’s life. After being swept up in Trump’s political orbit, friends say, the repeated calls to testify have left Hicks still grappling with its almost magnetic pull even as she has tried, repeatedly, to move on.
After Trump’s presidency, Hicks started a strategic consulting firm, where she works with a variety of clients, including some overseas, and splits her time between New York and D.C. She has largely steered clear of politics, though she did work on the unsuccessful 2022 Republican Senate primary campaign of David McCormick in Pennsylvania. (McCormick, who is now the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, is married to Dina Powell, who worked as a senior adviser in the Trump administration).
But Hicks’s reemergence at the criminal trial of her former boss is another grim reminder of Trump’s force field, the seemingly inexorable pull he exerts, intentional or not, over nearly everyone who enters his world.
Hicks spent most of Friday on the witness stand, acknowledging to a prosecutor that she was nervous before testifying in a clear voice about discussions she had with Trump and other campaign aides about Daniels and other women. At one point, Hicks was overcome with emotion as she described her long history working for Trump at his personal business and then the White House.
Trump, meanwhile, looked on from the defendant’s table, staring at his former aide impassively.
