Hope Hicks Is Not Allowed To Answer That

Surprise, Hicks's testimony for the House Judiciary Committee is going SUPER.

Today is Hope Hicks's big day before the House Judiciary Committee, and SURPRISE OF ALL SURPRISES, it is not going well .

As we noted when the House issued subpoenas to Hicks and Annie Donaldson, who was former White House counsel Don McGahn's deputy, these women do not work for the White House, and they testified all over the Mueller Report about the crimes they witnessed inside the Trump administration. In doing so, they effectively waived any kind of "executive privilege" Donald Trump might have tried to claim over their testimony.

And he hasn't exerted it! But, of course, there is somebody from the White House sitting right next to Hicks, telling her she's not allowed to say anything.

"Did you lie to Robert Mueller?"

I CANNOT TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT WHETHER I TOLD A LIE!

"Where was your desk?"

NO DESK! NO DESK! YOU ARE A DESK!

Jesus Christ. It's gonna be a real treat when we get the full transcript of this hearing later this week.

"She made clear she wouldn't answer a single question about her time unless the White House counsel told her it was okay," an exasperated Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said in an interview. "She couldn't even characterize her testimony to the special counsel."

Deutch added that the White House was not formally asserting executive privilege to block Hicks from answering certain questions; rather, the lawyer was referring to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone's Tuesday letter claiming that Hicks was "absolutely immune" from discussing her tenure in the Trump administration.

Uh huh, if Pat Cipollone says you have "absolute immunity," you'd better watch yourself, because that guy is full of shit. Hell, he's one of the ones arguing that Congress doesn't have any right to investigate the president, either because he hasn't read the Constitution or any case law about who or what "Congress" is," or because he's just that much of a shameless hack, willing to say and do anything to protect President Shithole. (It is almost certainly the second thing, about him being a hack. We imagine he knows better, unless he Christmas treed his bar exam and got lucky. But we guess it's possible he's very stupid, because we like to be fair here at Wonkette.)

According to Politico, Rep. David Cicilline said Hicks wouldn't even address all the lies she told for Trump during the campaign -- where there is definitely no immunity or executive privilege, but who cares, this White House is gonna try it! -- even though she told the House Intelligence Committee last year that she is a White Liar who sometimes told little bitty "white lies" for Trump.

Ted Lieu told Politico that Hicks has answered some questions about the Trump campaign, but Pramila Jayapal said Hicks is even staying mum on questions of things that happened after she left the White House once she became a private citizen again , because the White House lawyer is telling her she can't answer questions about her life after she left the White House once she became a private citizen again .

As we've noted many times, Hicks's testimony is incredibly important, as she has been there for everything , all the way going back to the campaign, and her name comes up hundreds   of times in the redacted Mueller Report. To pick but one example of how close Hicks was to the action, the House is clearly interested in her involvement in the drafting on Air Force One of the Trump lie-response to the revelations of Le Dipshit Junior's big Trump Tower Russian meeting, a statement the president reportedly dictated. Hell, Mark Corallo resigned as spokesman for Trump's legal team after all that, because he was worried there were too many criminal justice obstructors in the kitchen. (To read all about that, start on page 100 of Volume 2 of the Mueller Report. )

She was also close by for the Comey firing, and Trump trying to order Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller. She was like Trump's closest confidante, y'all! She heard ALL OF IT.

And as Kyle Cheney noted on Twitter this morning, Hicks may appear all over the Mueller Report, but if you study the footnotes to learn which interviews the information came from, there are a couple of gaps where lawmakers likely would like some clarification from Hicks, where her firsthand testimony appears to be missing. Both are related to some of the more extreme examples of Trump's obstruction of justice in the report.

Example the first:

That would be corroborating evidence for Trump asking Corey Lewandowski -- a private citizen -- to intervene at the Justice Department to get Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal from the Russia investigation or get YOU'RE FIRED. That would also be evidence that Hicks helped with that obstructive act.

Example the second:

And that would be evidence of Hicks participating in Trump's efforts to butter Michael Flynn up and keep him on side, in order to prevent him from flipping and cooperating with the government.

Oh, #Hopey! You better #Changey your tactics here, because you are swimming in perilous waters! Don't listen to the lying white man from the White House Counsel's office that says you'll be protected if you keep doing cover-ups for the president. The White House is not going to win this. And at the end of the day, the only person Trump cares about protecting is himself, so if that requires throwing Hope Hicks under the bus, he will not hesitate to do it.

Hopey she doesn't have to learn that the hard way!

[ Politico ]

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