Hope Hicks Watched the Capitol Being Attacked and Thought, Oh No! My Job Prospects!

Since wrapping up its year-and-a-half-long investigation of Donald Trump’s try and overturn the 2020 election and the riot that adopted, the January 6 committee has launched a number of batches of witness transcripts as a kind of companion piece to its 845-page report. Not surprisingly, few folks come out of those transcripts wanting good. Take, for instance, former White Home chief of workers Mark Meadows, who, in keeping with the declare of former White Home aide Cassidy Hutchinson, spent the final weeks of the Trump administration actually burning paperwork, which is one thing you simply by no means wish to do. Additionally not wanting nice, or a minimum of in any respect sympathetic? Longtime Trump adviser Hope Hicks, who apparently watched the violent assault on the Capitol unfold and thought, Oh no! That is going to have an effect on all these comfortable non-public sector jobs I had lined up!

Sure, textual content messages launched by the committee present Hicks whining to Julie Radford, former chief of workers to Ivanka Trump, that “in someday,” the insurrection-inciting president “ended each future alternative that doesn’t embody talking engagements on the native proud boys chapter.” She added, placing a nice level on it: “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up shall be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset. All of us appear to be home terrorists now.” In one other missive, Hicks wrote, “Not being dramatic, however we’re all fucked,” noting that Alyssa Farah Griffin, who resigned as White Home communications director just a few weeks after Trump misplaced the election, regarded “like a genius” for quitting.

After all, Hicks had an opportunity to (a minimum of try and) put some daylight between herself and the worst president in trendy historical past, whose actions led to a violent assault on democracy and the deaths of a number of folks—however selected to not. When she let it leak that she can be leaving the administration, she (1) didn’t accomplish that instantly however somewhat with only a few days to go till Joe Biden’s inauguration, and (2) made it clear that she was completely not taking an ethical stand towards the surprising violence that had unfolded in her boss’s identify. In keeping with studies on the time, Hicks informed folks she was not leaving Group Trump over the riots that left 5 folks useless and literal shit all around the flooring of the Capitol constructing; as an alternative, it was “a part of deliberate departure and regular drift away on the finish of an administration.”

As for her employability, as Jezebel notes, Hicks in all probability received’t be becoming a member of the breadline anytime quickly:

When Hicks left the White Home in 2018 for a two-year stint because the chief communications officer and govt vp of Fox Information, she took dwelling a whopping $1.9 million. (She returned to the White Home in March 2020.) She additionally hails from one in all Greenwich’s most distinguished households: Her father was as soon as the regional CEO of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and govt vp of communications for the NFL. He’s at present the managing director of the Glover Park Group, a DC communications consulting agency. Methinks shifting again in with mother and pa wouldn’t be the worst factor on this planet.

In different revelations across the January 6 transcript dumps, we discovered this week that longtime Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway urged Melania Trump to get her husband to cease the riot, arguing that although he would possibly take heed to individuals who work for him, he “reserves worry for one individual, Melania Trump.” (Sadly, the then first girl was bored with doing something concerning the assault, as she was reportedly busy serving to with rug pictures on the time.) We additionally discovered that the forty fifth president referred to as Senator Josh Hawley half a dozen occasions the day earlier than the riot after which once more the day of. (Given Hawley’s fist-pumping solidarity with the mob of election deniers gathered on the Capitol, whom he later fled from, you’ll be able to perceive why.)

After which, in fact, there’s the deeply disturbing information that Stefan Passantino, a former White Home ethics lawyer from the Trump administration, allegedly tried to get Cassidy Hutchinson to present false testimony earlier than the January 6 committee, successfully appearing like an worker of a Mob boss.

Per CBS Information:

Hutchinson struggled to seek out an legal professional and sought assist from folks she knew from her work on the White Home, together with former White Home legal professional Eric Herschmann. Ultimately, she acquired a name from Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White Home ethics lawyer who represented Hutchinson for her first two interviews with the committee, and didn’t inform her who was paying for his providers. In a February assembly, Hutchinson testified that Passantino informed her they’d “downplay” her position on the White Home and on Jan. 6 when she was interviewed by the choose committee.

Hutchinson stated she was uncomfortable with the association however felt she had no different alternative, telling the committee that she stated to her mom, “I’m fully indebted to those folks…they are going to break my life, Mother, if I do something they don’t need me to.” Hutchinson stated Passantino informed her to maintain her solutions “quick” and stated that saying “I don’t recall” is an “totally acceptable” response as a result of “they don’t know that you simply recall a few of these issues.” She informed the committee that testifying with him as her lawyer “felt like (she) had Trump wanting over (her) shoulder.”

“I knew in some vogue it might get again to him if I stated something that he would discover disloyal. And the prospect of that genuinely scared me. , I’d seen this world break folks’s lives or attempt to break folks’s careers. I’d seen how vicious they are often,” Hutchinson stated. She additionally informed the committee that Passantino additionally talked about job alternatives and labored to attach her with different folks on getting a job, saying, “We’re gonna get you taken care of. We wish to hold you within the household.” 

In an announcement, Passantino insisted to CBS Information that he represented Hutchinson “honorably, ethically, and totally constant along with her sole pursuits as she communicated them to me.” Hutchinson changed Passantino earlier than her public listening to with the January 6 committee, bringing on legal professional Jody Hunt. Throughout her public testimony, she shared extremely damning details about Trump, together with that he knew a few of his supporters had been armed earlier than they went to the Capitol and that he informed folks Mike Pence deserved chants calling for his hanging.