Trump’s First Criminal Trial Just Got a New Witness—and She’s a Doozy

Donald Trump’s already star-studded hush money trial just added a new witness to its lineup: former Trump White House Communications Director Hope Hicks.

Hicks had previously testified before a grand jury investigating Trump’s 2020 election interference, and she will testify again, reported MSNBC on Monday.

The trial, which is scheduled to begin jury selection on April 15, focuses on accusations against the former president for allegedly using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Hicks was, at the time, serving as Trump’s campaign press secretary.

An attorney for Hicks claimed in 2019 that the ex-aide was unaware of any hush money payments between her boss and Daniels, but an FBI affidavit in Cohen’s federal criminal case cast doubt on that, citing evidence that Cohen had exchanged calls, text messages, and emails with Daniels’s legal counsel, Trump, and Hicks.

“I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then [Daniels’s] attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign,” the affidavit reads.

Trump is facing 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. He has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Alongside Hicks, Cohen and Daniels are also expected to be star witnesses in the trial, though Trump had previously attempted to keep both of them far away from it on the basis that the two were “liars.” But last month, a judge nixed that effort, allowing them both to testify.

This story has been updated.