June 23, 2019

*-- Nadler: Hicks disagreed with Trump on accepting foreign election intelligence --*

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks told the House judiciary committee she found President Donald Trump's willingness to accept foreign help during an election to be "troubling," committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Thursday.

Hicks spoke behind closed doors with the committee Wednesday about her time as an aide on the Trump campaign and as a member of the White House communications team. Members of the committee said she largely refused to answer questions related to her time working for the White House.

But Nadler, D-N.Y., said Hicks broke with Trump on the issue of foreign assistance. During an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday, Trump said he'd accept foreign intelligence on political opponents during the 2020 presidential election. He also said he might not alert the FBI that he received such intelligence.

"I think you might want to listen, there isn't anything wrong with listening," he told George Stephanopoulos. "It's not an interference, they have information -- I think I'd take it.

"If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI -- if I thought there was something wrong."

Nadler shared Hicks' reaction to that interview during prepared remarks for a House judiciary hearing on the Robert Mueller report Thursday.

"Yesterday, during her transcribed interview, Ms. Hicks made clear that she understood the president to be serious when he said that he would accept foreign interference in our elections," he said. "She also made clear that even she knew that such foreign assistance should be rejected and reported to the FBI.

"His invitation to foreign actors is so alarming that even one of his most loyal former aides, Hope Hicks, knew that the president's statement was troubling."

Nadler's remarks about the hearing came hours before the committee released a full transcript of Hicks' interview. It detailed 155 times White House lawyers prevented her from answering questions.

She also revealed no one in the Trump campaign asked her "to lie about matters of substance or consequence." She said she did tell "white lies" for what she described as less important matters like his schedule availability.

Hicks also told lawmakers that Trump's July 2016 comment asking Russians to hack and retrieve former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails was a joke.

"You know, it was my understand from both the way he made the remark, and the discussion afterwards, that this was a little bit tongue-in-cheek," she said. "This was not a comment that was intended as an instructive or a directive to a foreign government."

Hicks resigned from the White House in March 2018 and now works as a chief communications officer and executive vice president at Fox Corp., which owns Fox News.

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