A former federal prosecutor said Hope Hicks' breaking down in tears on Friday as she testified at Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York City was "icing on the cake" for prosecutors in the former president's hush-money case.
Hicks, who was the communications director in the Trump administration and his top press campaign aide in 2016, told the court about the mood in the White House in January 2018 when a Wall Street Journal report revealed that Michael Cohen had paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to buy her silence weeks before the 2016 election about a sexual affair she claimed she had with Trump years before.
Hicks said she talked to Cohen about the payments, who denied them, and later spoke to Trump about them.
Hicks, under questioning by a prosecutor, said Trump told her he had spoken to Cohen "and Michael had paid this woman to protect him from a false allegation. Michael felt like it was his job to protect him and that's what he was doing. It was out of the kindness of his own heart."
She said Trump "thought it was a generous thing to do."
"He wanted to know how it was playing, and just my thoughts and opinion about this story versus having a different kind of story before the election had Mr. Cohen not made that payment," she recalled on the stand.
"I think Mr. Trump's opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election," HIcks said.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office are trying to prove that Cohen and Trump paid Daniels before the election and later falsified business records to disguise the payments.
As the prosecutor ended his questioning, allowing the defense to cross-examine her, Hicks began sobbing.
Andrew Weissmann, an assistant U.S. Attorney, was asked about Hicks crying on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" Friday night.
"I didn't really care why she was crying. And I think it's too overplayed," Weissmann said.
"I really cared about the substance of her testimony and I also thought about how her crying was kind of icing on the cake for the DA's office. I'm not in any way suggesting that they sought it, but her testimony was a body blow to the defense here because she put the guilty knowledge of the hush-money payments into Donald Trump's mouth and she recounted that testimony to the jurors," he continued.
