“I don’t see it getting much play,” she said, adding that “the media is the worst.”
When Mr. Cohen mentioned how little coverage the story was getting, Ms. Hicks replied: “Keep praying!! It’s working!” (In the courtroom, testifying in a criminal case that sprang in part from that story, Ms. Hicks acknowledged the irony of that particular message.)
Mr. Trump was elected, but The Journal was not done digging. In early 2018, it published an article exposing Mr. Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels. When asked about that, Ms. Hicks became fuzzy, saying she could not recall the period. She grew considerably more tense, clenching her jaw and stumbling a bit in her speech.
Ms. Hicks said she did not have knowledge of the records Mr. Trump is accused of falsifying. Those records, prosecutors say, disguised Mr. Trump’s repayment of Mr. Cohen for the hush money.
And at times, she seemed to aid the defense. When a prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, asked about Mr. Trump’s reaction to the initial The Wall Street Journal article, she said that he was “concerned about how it would be viewed by his wife.” That response recalled the defense’s opening statement, in which Mr. Trump was portrayed as a family man — and helped provide an alternative motive for efforts to cover up damaging information to which prosecutors have already linked him.
Still, Ms. Hicks’s testimony was key to the prosecution’s case, including when she recalled a potentially crucial conversation: “I believe I heard Mr. Trump speaking to Mr. Cohen shortly after the story was published,” she said, which prosecutors might use to argue that Mr. Trump was involved in the machinations.
Kaynak: briturkish.com
