Hope Hicks just landed a new job, and it may tell us something about the Trump-Russia scandal

| 7:07 pm EDT October 8, 2018
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Half a year after she abruptly resigned as Donald Trump’s White House Communications Director amid a storm of controversy, Hope Hicks has landed a new gig. Somewhat predictably, it’s a communications job with – you guessed it – Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News empire. But what may be more telling here is the timing of the new gig, particularly in relation to the Trump-Russia scandal.

Early in 2018, former Trump legal team spokesman Mark Corallo testified to Robert Mueller that he overheard Hope Hicks promising to destroy evidence in the Trump-Russia scandal. If true and provable, that would represent felony obstruction of justice on Hicks’ part, and she’d be looking at prison. Shortly after this revelation, the Trump-controlled House Intelligence Committee hauled in Hicks to testify. From the outside, it very much appeared that Trump was having his puppets poke around to try to figure out if Hicks was flipping on him. That’s where the trail went cold.

The thing is, it’s generally difficult to land a new high profile job if you’re in danger of going to prison. In fact we’ve seen this before. Last October, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (who had resigned months earlier) was reportedly “champing at the bit” to hurry up and testify to Robert Mueller. Almost immediately after testifying, Priebus took a new job as president of a prestigious law firm. This meant that Priebus came out of his testimony confident that he wasn’t going to be criminally charged. Later, we learned that Priebus had given his personal notes to Mueller. In hindsight, this kind of cooperation was probably what left Priebus feeling confident that he was a free man. So what does this have to do with Hope Hicks?

After resigning from the White House, Hope Hicks waited six months before taking this new high profile job. So why now? What made her decide this month, and not back in February, to take a new gig? Did something just happen between her and Robert Mueller? It felt all along like she had decided to flip on Donald Trump; in fact that seemed a given once she resigned in the manner that she did. In any case, she now seems pretty sure she’s not going to prison. And when an eyewitness has told prosecutors that you committed a serious felony, there are only two ways you can be sure you’re not going to prison: either you proved to prosecutors that you didn’t do it, or you flipped.