Donald Trump’s hush money to Hope Hicks exposed
Earlier this year, Palmer Report examined the publicly available evidence and deduced that Hope Hicks was preparing to cut a plea deal against Donald Trump. Sure enough, the next day Hicks abruptly announced that she was resigning from the White House. We still don’t have any official confirmation as to whether or not Hicks went through with that plea deal, but now it turns out Trump has been funneling hush money to Hicks all along to try to keep her quiet.
After the Republican National Committee was caught several months ago taking money from a Kremlin oligarch with dual U.S. citizenship and using it to pay Trump’s legal bills, the RNC announced that it was suspending the practice. Now we’re learning that the RNC has instead been paying the legal bills of Trump’s associates and alleged co-conspirators. The primary recipient of that money has been, to no one’s surprise, Hope Hicks.
The RNC has paid roughly half a million dollars to a law firm which is representing Hicks and a handful of less relevant Trump-Russia players, according to a new report from the Washington Post. It’s not clear if that money has been coming from the same oligarch who was funding Trump’s defense, or from other sources. What is clear, however, is that the RNC is paying (technically legal) hush money to Hicks in an attempt at keeping her quiet. However, it may not be working.
Although this money is clearly intended to convince Hope Hicks to stay quiet and fight whatever obstruction charges are brought against her, there is nothing to prevent her from taking the money and then cutting a plea deal anyway. Former Trump legal team spokesman Mark Corallo testified to Robert Mueller that he heard Hicks promising to scuttle evidence, meaning that it would be quite difficult for her to beat obstruction charges in court, no matter how good her lawyers are. Mueller has cut plea deals with Trump-Russia figures and then in some instances kept it quiet for several months.
