Less than 24 hours after former Trump aide Hope Hicks testified (compelled to do so by subpoena) in a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee, the transcript, which stretches 273 pages long, has been released.
Hicks and Nadler arriving for the testimony yesterday…
Video of Hope Hicks arrival on Capitol Hill … House Judiciary Chair Nadler follows her into the committee room right after. pic.twitter.com/gSDQ1Iym05
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 19, 2019
While the transcript confirms White House lawyers repeatedly blocking her from answering questions about her work in the administration – a tactic that infuriated Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday – it also details the farcical circus sideshow this whole spectacle has become with the committee chair forgetting Ms. Hicks’ name, one congressman live-tweeting the “closed-door” interview, another urging speculation and a final Democratic lawmaker accidentally admitting the DNC emails were “leaked” not “hacked.”
Nadler forgets Hicks’ name… twice…
pp20
Chairman Nadler. Ms. Lewandowski — sorry — Ms. Hicks…
pp25
Chairman Nadler. Yeah. Ms. Lewandowski, I think, in reading this —
Ms. Hicks. My name is Ms. Hicks.
Chairman Nadler. I’m sorry, Ms. Hicks. I’m preoccupied.
Speak Up!
pp44-45
Mr. Gaetz. Ms. Jackson Lee, while Ms. Hicks is speaking with her counsel, I just want to let you know of a dynamic back here on the back row. We’re having a little bit of a hard time hearing, and so if you guys could get right up on the microphone. And then there’s a good amount of sort of murmuring and people shuffling in the row directly in front of us. It’s probably Mr. Cicilline.
But if we could —Mr. Cicilline. Gasping in disbelief.
Mrs. Demings. You can’t hear anybody speaking, so if everybody could speak up.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Gaetz, I will speak as loudly as I possibly can. Can you hear me now?
Mr. Gaetz. Yes, ma’am. Thank you. We’re all the better for it.
“Leaked” DNC Emails… a smoking gun?
p58
Mr. Neguse. Did Mr. Trump during the campaign ever tell you that he had knowledge that additional information would be released with respect to the leaks or — excuse me — the hacks done by WikiLeaks and so forth?
Pure Speculation
pp69
Mr. Gohmert. And I know you don’t want to speculate, but I’m really curious. Now you’ve been through a great deal on behalf of your country. I can’t help but be curious, if you had known the hell that you would be put through as a result of the Clinton campaign hiring a foreign agent to get information from Russians and that people within the FBI and the DOJ and potentially intel would be working against the President, would you still have gone to work for the President?
Ms. Hicks. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity I had to serve, and, yes, I would do it all over again.
Mr. Gohmert. Even knowing you had to hire these lawyers?
Ms. Hicks. Even knowing that. I would do anything to make a positive contribution for our country, and I’m very grateful I had that opportunity. I’m proud of my service, and I thank all of you for your service as well.
Mr. Gohmert. Well, thank you for your service.
Media helped Clinton… happy their campaign had issues…
pp105
Mr. Cicilline. …you would agree, would you not, Ms. Hicks, that the campaign, the Trump campaign, benefited from the hacked information on Hillary Clinton? Is that a fair statement?
Ms. Hicks. No more so than the Clinton campaign benefited from the media helping them and providing information about Mr. Trump.
Mr. Cicilline. Okay. But you agree, though, I think, in that question, that the Trump campaign benefited from the hacked information on Hillary Clinton.
Ms. Hicks. I don’t know what the direct impact was.
Mr. Cicilline. Okay. You would agree that the campaign was happy to receive information damaging to Hillary Clinton, correct?
Ms. Hicks. I think that “happy” is not — I don’t think that’s a fair characterization. I think “relief that we weren’t the only campaign with issues” is more accurate.
“Chaos” sown by Steele Dossier
pp165
“I’m asking you this based on your experience and the expertise you’ve developed, would you take foreign oppo information from a foreign government, if that were offered when working on a political campaign?” Norm Eisen, one of the committee lawyers, asked Hicks.
“You know, knowing how much chaos has been sowed as a result of something like the Steele dossier, no, I would not,” Hicks responded.
“Lieu Is live-tweeting this…”
pp72
Mr. Collins. Could I just — I apologize, and I know we talked about this before. And we’ll stop the clock, we’ll give you a full hour. But it’s also been discussed in here that this was — and the chairman made a great elaborate statement as we started this about being confidential and keeping that through the day.
But Mr. Lieu is live-tweeting this. So I mean, if he’s willing to break his own chairman, I want it noted for the record that the Member of the Democratic Party in this committee is live-tweeting what his own chairman had asked him to keep confidential.
Now, if this is the way we want to play it, we’ve now proven that this is nothing but a political stunt. It is a press avail opportunity. And if Mr. Lieu would like to go outside and testify to the press, that’s fine. But simply doing this like it is, it’s a mockery.
Mr. Lieu. I’ve been live-tweeting their objections because they are so absurd.
Mr. Collins. Did you have trouble understanding the chairman?
Republican lawmakers were just as furious at Democratic games as the Democrats were that Hicks gave them no smoking gun – just as she hadn’t during her lengthy interviews with Mr. Mueller.
“Preposterous Proceeding”
pp69
Mr. Gaetz. I have no questions for Ms. Hicks, but it seems worth noting for the record that this is a preposterous proceeding. The special counsel had an unlimited budget, an unlimited amount of time, 19 prosecutors, dozens of Federal agents, over 2,000 witness statements, over 500 subpoenas, and the concept that a dozen or so Members of Congress are going to sit around with Ms. Hicks over the course of a day and uncover some fact that was left out of the Mueller report belies any common sense.
And given that we are now through the majority’s first hour and they have not uncovered a single fact from Ms. Hicks that was not evident in the Mueller report, it seems indicative that this is largely about posturing and not about any development of any facts.
“This is really a farce… the Majority should get back to work”
pp69-70
Mr. Biggs. Thank you. Andy Biggs from Arizona’s Fifth Congressional District. I thank you for being here today, Ms. Hicks.
And I will say Mr. Gaetz took a lot of my statement, but I will — I want to add on to something, one aspect of this. In reviewing the Mueller report, you will find that Ms. Hicks’ testimony or 302s have been referenced 27 times, extensively and exhaustively, in the Mueller report.
In fact, the majority keeps wanting you to read what you were quoted as saying in the Mueller report or other quotations from the Mueller report.
This is really a farce, quite frankly. It’s a waste of your time, it’s a waste of our time. Because what we see here is the majority wants to relitigate the Mueller investigation. And they believe that the extensive resources that were expended on the Mueller investigation, including the 22 months that it took, the countless interviews, the subpoenas, 1.4 million documents reviewed — and I keep waiting for them to expand their — expand what they want to do here.
But we’re going to bring you in. They’re going to ask you questions that they know that you can’t answer. And it’s, quite frankly, it’s an abuse of process, quite frankly, an abuse of the congressional process.
And so, I’ve called on my colleagues on the majority to get back to work, get back to work.
One more Hicks photo… because ‘Murica.
The full transcript is below:
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Y514pa Tyler Durden