Hope Hicks resists House investigators questions about the Trump administration

Source: Washington Post

Hope Hicks, one of President Trump’s closest aides and advisers, met Tuesday with House investigators probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. But she refused to answer any questions about events and conversations that occurred since Trump took office, according to a Republican lawmaker who was there during the proceedings.

Emerging from the meeting with Hicks, panel member Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) said that “there are some questions that she’s not going to answer,” adding that Hicks was not willing to detail anything from the inauguration forward.

Her refusal to answer questions about the Trump administration’s tenure suggests lawmakers will have a difficult time learning her side of a key story: the drafting of a misleading statement to explain an un­or­tho­dox meeting at Trump Tower between top Trump campaign members and a Russian lawyer.

Hicks works as the White House communications director, but her proximity to Trump and long history of working with the Trump family make her testimony potentially valuable to the panel’s probe of Russian interference in the elections. In particular, Hicks is likely to face questions about a statement she helped draft on Air Force One last summer, addressing a June 2016 meeting that the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort held with a Russian lawyer in Manhattan. The misleading statement has raised questions about whether there was a deliberate attempt to obstruct justice surrounding the meeting.

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