A high-school lacrosse champ and teen model from tony Greenwich, Connecticut, Hope Hicks ended up in an unenviable position on Friday: testifying against her ex-boss in the hush-money trial of Donald Trump.
Here’s how the 35-year-old ended up there, year by year:
2014
Ivanka Trump poaches Hicks from the PR firm Hiltzik Strategies for her expanding and lifestyle brand. She did everything from publicity to modeling and quickly became a trusted aide to the future first daughter. She also impressed Donald Trump, who would later tell .
Hicks, with Dan Scavino and Stephen Miller, walks to Marine One on Sept. 21, 2020.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty
2021
Hicks exits the White House, with Bloomberg reporting that her departure was said to be pre-planned and did not have anything to do with the Capitol riots a few weeks earlier. (It later emerges that after the insurrection she sent a text saying Trump made the White House staff look like “domestic terrorists” and ended “every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagement at the local proud boys chapter.”)
2022
Hicks is interviewed by the Jan. 6 committee and tells them that she told Trump there was no evidence the 2020 election was stolen from him. “I wasn’t seeing evidence of fraud on a scale that would have impacted the outcome of the election. And I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy,” she testified. “He said something along the lines of, you know, nobody will care about my legacy if I lose. So that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning.”
Hicks is seen on a screen during the last House Jan. 6 committee hearing.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty
2023
Hicks meets with Manhattan prosecutors investigating hush-money payments Trump made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, and she later reportedly testifies before the grand jury that ultimately indicts him.
2024
As the hush-money trial ends its third week, Hicks takes the stand as a prosecution witness to testify against Trump. Her testimony centers on the campaign’s reaction to the release of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Trump boasts about grabbing women by their genitals—which unleashed a scandal that allegedly led him to approve the payments to Stormy Daniels. Hicks breaks down in tears under cross-examination.
A courtroom sketch of Hicks on the witness stand.
