“We got Bannoned,” House Intel Dem says of Hope Hicks’ testimony

FAN Editor

Three hours into her scheduled testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, White House Communications Director Hope Hicks appears to be answering some of the committee’s questions, according to multiple members, though Democrats and Republicans on the committee differed on how useful those answers were.

Asked how the interview with Hicks was proceeding, Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-New Jersey, said, “pretty boring.”

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, quipped to reporters that he needed some “NoDoz,” a type of caffeine capsule. 

Both Republican members said Hicks was responsive to the committee inquiries, though they declined to specify whether topics that occurred during the transition were addressed. 

Rep. Denny Heck, D-Washington, had a different take. Emerging from the committee’s secure spaces, and, asked whether the interview was productive, he replied, “We got Bannoned” – strongly suggesting that Hicks’ testimony had been limited by the
White House, as was the case with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

As of Tuesday morning, it was an open question whether, like other witnesses with ties to the White House, Hicks would adhere to a limited scope of questions determined by the Trump administration.

Several other witnesses – including Bannon and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski– declined to answer questions related to events that took place after the conclusion of the campaign, prompting protests from committee members and raising the specter, in Bannon’s case, of being held in contempt of Congress.

Hicks’ appearance was abruptly postponed once in January as counsel for the White House and committee sorted out the scope of her testimony, which continues behind closed doors.

The committee wants to hear from Hicks on any contact Trump campaign members might have had with Russian intermediaries. Members were also interested in Hicks’ knowledge of the White House’s initial statement, drafted aboard Air Force One, in response to press reports of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and Trump campaign officials. 

Hicks’ own role in responding to reports of the meeting has also been under scrutiny. According to a report in the New York Times, a former spokesman for President Trump’s legal team, Mark Corallo, planned to tell Mueller’s team that Hicks said on a conference call that emails written by the President’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., about the Trump Tower meeting, “will never get out.”

hope hicks

Hope Hicks, White House director of strategic communications, arrives to a swearing-in ceremony of White House senior staff in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 22, 2017, in Washington.

Getty

In a statement at the time, Hicks’ lawyer, Robert P. Trout, strongly denied Corallo’s allegation. “She never said that,” Trout said, “And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false.”

Hicks has already been questioned by the special counsel and the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of their respective investigations, according to multiple sources.

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