(CNN) White House communications director Hope Hicks appears Tuesday behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee, where Republican members of the panel say they expect President Donald Trump's close aide to answer their questions as part of their investigation into Russian meddling into the US election.
Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who is among the GOP members leading the investigation, told CNN ahead of the meeting that he expects Hicks to answer all questions, including during the transition and her time in the White House. He said he is not aware of any agreement to limit the scope of her testimony.
"We'll find out this morning," he said.
Lawmakers are watching to see how forthcoming Hicks will be as she appears for the closed-door interview, following former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon declining to answer questions when he was interviewed by the committee earlier this month. Bannon said he had been instructed by the White House to invoke executive privilege on behalf of Trump , and he would not answer questions beyond the time frame of the 2016 campaign.
Hicks did not answer reporter questions on her way into the interview Tuesday morning. She was initially scheduled to appear before the committee last month, but her testimony was delayed over questions about whether she could discuss the presidential transition and her time at the White House.
The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said Monday that he did not know whether Hicks will answer all of the committee's questions.
"We don't know at this point if she will testify completely or fully as others who have served in the administration have, or whether she will do what Steve Bannon did, which was stonewall," Schiff said. "We hope obviously she will be cooperative, but at this point I don't know what we can expect."
Schiff has called on the House panel to issue contempt citations to Bannon and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who also limited the scope of questions he would answer, although the Republican leading the committee's Russia investigation, Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, has not said yet if that step would be pursued.
Hicks has already been interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Hicks also met last year with special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation.
Hicks, a trusted Trump aide for years, was one of then-candidate Trump's first hires as he put together an improbable run for the White House. During the campaign, she was often by Trump's side and attended nearly every rally, while she was in frequent communication with other senior officials as they coordinated their tactics to win the White House.
The House panel plans to interview her about any knowledge she has of contacts that occurred between other Trump associates and Russians. And she is bound to be questioned about other controversies as well, namely the White House's involvement in crafting a misleading response last summer once a June 2016 meeting between Russians and Donald Trump Jr. was revealed in the press.
Hicks appears to have firsthand knowledge of a number of key events that have shaped the first year of the Trump White House, including being on Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians was crafted.
This story has been updated with developments from Tuesday.
White House Communications Director Hope Hicks is expected to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, in the latest chapter in a standoff over what top White House officials will be allowed to discuss.
She will appear behind closed doors, after her January scheduled appearance got postponed, CBS News reported, citing multiple sources.
Her appearance follows a heated clash between the committee and former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon.
White House Communications Director Hope Hicks is expected to testify before the House Intelligence Committee
Hope Hicks' position in the White House came under additional scrutiny amid the Rob Porter scandal
The panel's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said it was 'likely' Bannon would face contempt of Congress after failing to answer numerous questions in his last appearance.
'I think it's likely that he will face a contempt citation,' Schiff said after Bannon only agreed to answer 25 questions authorized by the White House.
White House lawyers are attempting to declare off-limits questions from the transition, although so far the White House has stopped short of declaring executive privelege.
'I suspect that Mr. Bannon has been informed that [the White House] will only stonewall so far,' Schiff said at the Council on Foreign Relations.
'They will never allow him to be fined or go to jail, but they do wish to draw the process as long as they can,' Schiff added.
Hicks was aboard Air Force One when the White House drafted a statement in response to a New York Times report that Donald Trump Jr. had met in Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer.
Additionally, the New York Times reported that Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for the president's legal team, planned to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team that Hicks had said that the emails that Donald Trump Jr wrote about the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians 'will never get out.'
Hicks is one of the president's longest-serving political aides, having joined the campaign at its genesis.
Before that, the former teen model handled public relations for Ivanka Trump within the Trump Organization.
Hicks' position in the White House came under additional scrutiny amid the Rob Porter scandal, as she had been dating the White House staff secretary at the time that he resigned in disgrace after DailyMail.com revealed allegations of abuse from two of his ex-wives.
She and Porter are no longer dating, according to people with knowledge of the former relationship.
The House Intelligence Committee is expected to meet with White House Communications Director Hope Hicks on Feb. 27, as part of its probe into Russia's role in the 2016 election. (Reuters)
The House Intelligence Committee is expected to meet with White House Communications Director Hope Hicks on Feb. 27, as part of its probe into Russia's role in the 2016 election. (Reuters)
Hope Hicks, one of President Trump’s closest aides and advisers, is scheduled to speak behind closed doors Tuesday with the House Intelligence Committee in a meeting lawmakers fear could deepen their standoff with the White House over witnesses refusing to answer questions.
Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who is running the panel’s Russia investigation, said in an interview Monday that he “would not be surprised” if Hicks followed the example of other close Trump aides and advisers who have simply refused to answer certain questions, arguing that the president might want to invoke executive privilege at some point in the future.
Hicks currently 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 ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. In particular, Hicks is likely to face questions about a statement she helped draft on Air Force One 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 Trump Tower. The misleading statement has raised questions about whether there was a deliberate attempt to obstruct justice surrounding the meeting.
But it is not clear that Hicks will answer the questions she is asked.
Conaway likened the possibility Hicks might refuse to answer questions to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, when he declined to answer several queries in case Trump might later want to invoke executive privilege. The argument did not sit well with senators on the panel.
[Hope Hicks: The quiet one in Trump’s White House suddenly feels the glare]
The House Intelligence Committee is now grappling with a similar situation with former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whom House investigators slapped with a subpoena last month when he refused to answer questions about not just his time in the White House but the transition period as well, on the rationale that executive privilege might later apply. Bannon has since returned to the committee but maintains that he will not answer questions from those time periods that have not been preapproved by the White House.
The committee is currently weighing whether to hold Bannon in contempt for his lack of cooperation. Several Democratic and Republican members of the panel are eager to issue a citation, arguing contempt is necessary to demonstrate that congressional subpoenas must be complied with. But the decision depends on Conaway and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) reaching an agreement, and the two have not yet met to discuss the issue, Conaway said Monday.
Hicks initially was expected to speak with the House Intelligence Committee last month, but her interview was canceled in the wake of the dramatic standoff with Bannon that resulted in his subpoena. Conaway said he is not aware of any deal with Hicks to limit interview questions in exchange for her appearance.
But committee members have been caught off-guard by Trump’s close advisers before. Bannon claimed that his lawyers had agreed with a committee staffer that he would not be asked questions about the transition period or his time in the White House, an apparent deal no panel members were aware of or willing to honor. The panel is also currently grappling over what to do about former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who initially claimed that he was unprepared to answer the committee’s questions and needed more time but later informed the panel he would not return to complete his interview.
[Trusted Trump aide Hope Hicks named White House communications director]
Should Hicks be willing to answer all the committee’s questions, it would be a break from that recent pattern. She has already spoken with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team.
Hope Hicks, a trusted confidante and adviser to President Trump, was named White House communications director on Sept. 12. (The Washington Post)
“I hope that she’ll come prepared to answer all of our questions,” said the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.). “There have been other administration witnesses who have placed no limits on our ability to ask questions about the transition or their time in the administration. I hope that she’ll be forthcoming in that way.”
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White House Communications Director Hope Hicks arrived for a private interview on Tuesday with the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Hicks, who is meeting with the committee voluntarily, didn’t speak to reporters as she made her way into committee offices.
The panel’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, said questions the committee wants to ask relate to events and conversations during Hicks’s role as part of the Trump campaign, and as part of the administration.
On Jan. 31, the New York Times reported that a former spokesman for President Donald Trump’s legal team, Mark Corallo, was prepared then to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller of his concerns over a comment Hicks made during a phone call with him and the president.
According to the Times, Corallo said Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. about a June, 9, 2016, meeting with Russians at Trump Tower would “never get out." Corallo was concerned that Hicks might be considering obstructing justice, the Times reported, citing sources. Her lawyer, Robert Trout, denied Hicks made such a statement or suggested documents or emails would be concealed, the Times reported.
Trout on Monday didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump Tower Aftermath
Some of the questions, Schiff said, will focus on "what role she may have played in the drafting of that initial false statement about the Trump Tower meeting" to the media last summer. Schiff said that Hicks will be asked to describe what roles the younger Trump, and even the president, had in crafting that statement.
He was referring to reports that during an Air Force One flight from Germany, Trump reportedly dictated a statement to Hicks as a initial response for the media to revelations that his eldest son had met with the Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign.
The statement’s assertion that Donald Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer had primarily discussed a program for adopting Russian children turned out to be false when emails revealed that Trump Jr. had agreed to the meeting after being offered dirt on his father’s presidential foe, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Hicks’s previously planned appearance before the panel was delayed, as her lawyers and the committee discussed the scope of the planned questioning. It wasn’t clear whether she plans to answer questions Tuesday.
Schiff said he hopes Hicks will be more forthcoming than former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowski.
Committee Democrats complained that Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, gave scripted responses and refused to answer many questions, saying he’d been instructed by the White House to invoke executive privilege. Schiff has called for the committee to consider contempt action against Bannon.
Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager, told committee members in his voluntary appearance in January he wasn’t prepared to answer questions beyond the time when he left the campaign, though he stopped short of asserting executive privilege. He promised to return, but hasn’t.
