When doing a review of his life, April, 2024 is not going to be one of Donald Trump’s most favorite months. It will be a memorable month for him, but not because of something good happening, the birth of a child, a marriage, the day the family business got booming. No, Trump will look back on an April that left much to be desired and we’re able to confidently make this statement and it’s only sunset on the first in parts of the country.
First of all, there was the debacle with Truth Social, which lost either one billion or two billion on the stock exchange today — and who really cares, right? It’s all monopoly money, although I’m sure Trump was thrilled to get back on the Forbes richest people list for a day or two. Trump did come up with his $175M bond payment in the Trump Organization fraud trial appeal, and it would be so convenient if he could come up with an appellate lawyer now as well. The appeal is purely theoretical until one has an actual lawyer who intends to litigate the matter.
But what is really sticking in Trump’s craw on this April Fool Day is the hush money trial set to go forward on the 15th. Trump’s lawyers did yet another one of their frivolous, specious, makeweight (legalese for bullshit) motions today, claiming that he can’t get a fair trial in this case in New York due to publicity. Donald, you couldn’t get a “fair trial” by your definition in Outer Mongolia in any of your cases, due to publicity. And you are the sole architect of that adversity. You’ve made yourself into a global freak show.
There are numerous reasons why Trump is unhappy about this trial going forward and not the least of them is that Michael Cohen will take the stand. But you know who else will? Hope Hicks. And that could prove problematic at best, catastrophic at worst. NBC News:
An attorney for Hicks said in 2019 that she’d been unaware of the hush money payment until it became public. But an FBI agent who’d been investigating Cohen said in an affidavit for Cohen’s federal criminal case that he believed Hicks was involved in the negotiations aimed at preventing Daniels from going public with her claim that she’d had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied sleeping with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
The affidavit noted that the negotiations began in earnest after Trump’s campaign was reeling from the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape on Oct. 7, 2016. In that video from 2005, Trump could be heard saying in a hot mic moment that he can grope women without their consent because “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
“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 Clifford’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 FBI agent wrote in the affidavit.
“Based on the timing of these calls, and the content of the text messages and emails, I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story,” the affidavit said.
Court records indicate Hicks called Cohen at 7:20 p.m. on Oct. 8, 2016 — the first time she had called him in weeks — and that Trump joined the call seconds later. The conversation lasted four minutes. Hicks and Cohen spoke privately after Trump left the call and, after that, Cohen phoned Pecker, the president of AMI, according to court records.
Moments after that conversation ended, Cohen received a phone call from Howard, the chief content officer at AMI, the court records indicated. Cohen then called Hicks and spoke again with Pecker. At 8:03 p.m., according to the unsealed federal court documents, Cohen called Trump. They spoke for eight minutes.
The court records also have Trump and Cohen speaking twice on Oct. 26, the day Cohen wired $130,000 to an escrow account that would eventually be sent to Daniels’ attorney as payment for an agreement to secure her silence.
If there are inconsistencies in Hicks’ testimony, that will all come out at trial. Sunshine is quite a disinfectant. The question then becomes, “Would Hicks risk perjuring herself to protect Trump?” And the answer is, I doubt that very much. Plus, the prosecution is certain to have some interesting questions to ask Hicks which would reveal Trump’s actions at the time and maybe even illuminate some dark side of his character, although I doubt very much that anything she could say would surprise anybody at this point.
But who knows? The devil is in the details and if anybody could exhume some interesting details about Trump, it would be Hope Hicks. You learn a lot about a man when you’re on your knees pressing wrinkles out of his pants while he’s wearing them, I daresay.
Here are Hope Hick’s texts from the afternoon of January 6.
Yeah, you do. That exchange sounds a trifle disillusioned and I’m sure that Hicks felt more than a trifle that way. Trump is probably worrying, and with good cause, about how loyal she might remain, or if she’s going to do herself some good and drive a wedge between the two of them. We have seen the likes of Stephanie Winston-Wolkoff and Stephanie Grisham do exactly that with respect to Trump world, and to great personal benefit.
Hicks may already be there. And Trump doesn’t want to find out. The good news is that none of us have that long to wait.
I think she would lie for Trump. Under Oath. She drank too much of the Kool Aid, or perhaps inhaled too much of the orange spray tanner. Perhaps she’s thinking she’ll get pardoned by Trump next January. She’d better get her head on straight because if she lies on the stand she WILL get hit with perjury charges. And she ain’t cut out for prison. I recall reading years back how her parents were at one point hopeful when she seemed to have decided to get out of Trump World, and despondent when despite having made the break chose to jump back in. I have no sympathy for her.
But COULD she get pardoned? Perhaps I’m misunderstanding but I thought this was another state trial, rather than federal. There’s no federal pardon for state proceedings. Again, maybe I’m wrong here (so many cases, trying to keep up with federal vs state is tough).
Not a problem for him if he should get back in the WH. He’d order his AG to end all the federal cases. As for the state charges he’d create an executive order that retroactively declares all Trump properties to be federal property, AND that if any elemeent of any “alleged fake crime) took place he had authority to designate it a federal crime and pardon anyone he wanted to.
But, I did some checking. Bragg is the DISTRICT ATTORNEY for Manhattan County (basically, Manhattan Island, New York); he doesn’t have the authority to handle a FEDERAL case.
As for the rest, you’re just overreaching. Trump can’t simply create an executive order that overrides STATE jurisdictions (if things were really so easy, Georgia’s governor and legislature could’ve stopped Fani Willis’s prosecution on Day One). Not even “red” states would be willing to accept Trump’s hypothetical order as binding.
Also, declaring Trump properties to be federal properties wouldn’t have any effect as far as Hope Hicks is concerned.
And he couldn’t declare his properties as federal retroactively to when the crimes occurred. The crimes would still have occurred at a point of time at which his properties were not federal. So this is kind of silly.
Silly was the point. But it’s the kind of shit for brains thinking Trump might come up with. He figures once he’s dictator he can do whatever the hell he wants. The serious part is that tyrants do actually make up whatever rules they want to meet their whims and/or needs and will arrest and even execute those who stand in their way.
He should also be scared about Karen McDougal’s testimony.
I’m not willing to listen to an hour of a Playboy playmate discussing an affair with Trump, as I don’t enjoy being nauseated, but I admit to being curious about why a very beautiful woman, well versed in the ways of the world, would decide that a well-known scumbag and phony would make a great romantic companion. Was it because he was a “star?”