President Trump left the courtroom and when asked about Ms. Hicks's testimony told reporters he was not allowed to comment under the gag order.
He criticized the prosecutors instead, including Mr. Bragg, for not prosecuting violent crime.
"What they've done to people in my company—they've been after us for years ... and they've destroyed people's lives," he said. "They've been with lawyers for years and been sucked dry. And it's a shame, a shame what they've done to this country, and it's a shame what they've done to great people who've been absolutely ruined and destroyed, not only here but all over."
Testimony ended and attorneys held a sidebar with the judge.
Prosecutors sought permission to elicit testimony about President Trump being held in contempt by the court should he decide to testify, but the judge sided with the defense and said it would be "extremely prejudicial" to admit that finding.
"He really values, President Trump really values Mrs. Trump's opinion," Ms. Hicks said.
"And she doesn't weigh in all the time but when she does it's really meaningful to him, and he really respects what she has to say, and I think he was concerned about what the perception of that would be, and this was weighing on him," Ms. Hicks said.
Ms. Hicks confirmed that President Trump gave a lot of feedback regarding the media.
"He does, he likes to call and praise people about stories, he does a really nice job of maintaining relationships and always being willing to engage with the media even if he doesn't always think the treatment he gets is fair. He speaks with publishers, authors, journalists," she said.
Mr. Bove said the media events they've focused on were the Access Hollywood tape and the Wall Street Journal articles about Ms. Clifford and Ms. McDougal. Ms. Hicks confirmed that his level of involvement was normal for their operation.
After a break, Mr. Bove continued questioning Ms. Hicks.
She confirmed that there was a legal department at The Trump Organization, which included Jason Greenblatt, and testified that Mr. Cohen was not part of the campaign.
"He would try to insert himself at certain moments," she said.
Cross-examination began and Mr. Bove asked Ms. Hicks about her start with the Trump Organization in 2014. He asked her to confirm the focus of her role when she began.
Ms. Hicks broke down in tears, audibly crying.
Justice Merchan asked if she wanted a break, and Ms. Hicks said "yes, please."
![Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner (L) and counselor to the president Hope Hicks step off Air Force One upon arrival at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Oct. 31, 2020. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F05%2F03%2Fid5643260-GettyImages-1229386085-600x399.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
Ms. Hicks said later the Wall Street Journal published another story about Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, received a $130,000 payment. Another member of her team had received an email from the reporter.
"I don't remember speaking to Michael right then, but sometime in the aftermath of the story I spoke to him," she said. "I believe that I spoke to Mr. Cohen after I spoke to Mr. Trump."
Mr. Colangelo asked whether Ms. Hicks knew if Mr. Trump communicated with Mr. Cohen directly about these reports.
Madeleine Westerhout, another former aide to President Trump, texted Ms. Hicks on March 20, 2018: "Hey - the president wants to know if you call David pecker again?"
Mr. Colangelo noted this was the same date Ms. McDougal sued AMI, and that Ms. McDougal did an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN shortly after.
Ms. Hicks said she had no recollection of speaking to Mr. Pecker after the interview.
Ms. Hicks said Mr. Cohen messaged her after the story was published, and several of his texts were shown in the courtroom.
Mr. Cohen said, "lots of innuendo with little fact" and "poorly written and I don't see it getting much play."
After a lunch break, prosecuting attorney Matthew Colangelo continued questioning Ms. Hicks.
She confirmed she heard Mr. Trump speaking to Mr. Cohen after the story was published.
"We were in a car on our way to a rally," Ms. Hicks said. "I presumably heard Mr. Trump, there was nothing memorable, I don't really remember anything that was said."
Ms. Hicks said she also talked to Mr. Cohen about the news of the story about Ms. McDougal.
"I believe I called Michael Cohen, just because I knew he had a relationship with Mr. Pecker," Ms. Hicks said.
"[I] just asked what was going on, why was I receiving this email, and he explained that Karen McDougal was paid for magazine covers and fitness columns and that it was all very legitimate and that was what the contract was for," Ms. Hicks said.
Ms. Hicks said had heard of Karen McDougal once before the Nov. 4, 2016, Wall Street Journal article was published.
She said in November 2015 she was on one of Mr. Trump's planes and "some of the security guys at the plane were telling a story about a celebrity gold tournament and some of the participants in the tournament, and she was there."
"I think we had just landed in Ohio and Mr. Trump was going to get off the plane and do a rally on the tarmac of the airport," she said. "He was going to go and start the rally and I received the email."
![President Donald Trump laughs as Hope Hicks, a senior adviser to the president, speaks to the crowd after the president brought her on stage during a campaign event at the Ocala International Airport on Oct. 16, 2020, in Ocala, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F05%2F03%2Fid5643116-GettyImages-1280636223-600x400.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
Ms. Hicks was asked whether she spoke with Mr. Cohen when the tape was released, and she said she spoke with him on Oct. 8 about rumors of another tape.
"I didn't want anyone to be blindsided, have an understanding of what material was out there we needed to prepare for," Ms. Hicks said. "There was no such tape regardless, but he sort of faced that down with me."
She confirmed Mr. Trump was concerned the tape could hurt his standing with voters.
Ms. Hicks said she didn't have a strong recollection of the conversation after. "But I know Mr. Trump felt like this wasn't good, but it was also like two guys talking privately, it was locker room talk. Certainly it wasn't something to get upset over, I felt like he thought this was pretty standard stuff for two guys chatting with each other," she said.
Ms. Hicks said Mr. Trump always liked to weigh in with responses so the campaign issued a short statement that the group had worked on together.
Attorneys played the clip for the courtroom.
Ms. Hicks said she didn't remember if they saw the tape before it was published but they "obviously" saw it "in a matter of minutes" once it was.
"Was Mr. Trump upset?" prosecutors asked.
"Yes, yes he was," Ms. Hicks said.
Ms. Hicks said she went to the 25th floor of Trump Tower where Mr. Miller, Ms. Conway, Mr. Bannon, and possibly Jared Kushner and Steven Miller were also present doing prep for a debate.
"I motioned for Jason to come out and speak with me, to try not to disrupt the debate prep, and the sight of the six of us gathered out there was a sign that something was afoot and Mr. Trump asked us to come into the conference room at some point and share what we were discussing," Ms. Hicks said.
"I shared the email with Mr. Trump, sort of verbally, and we were at the time, based on the conversation outside the conference room, trying to get a copy of the audio of the tape, to assess the situation further," she said.
Ms. Hicks said that when Mr. Trump became the GOP nominee, they were traveling every day.
"So we were based here in New York and we would usually leave Trump Tower about 7 in the morning, we would go to LaGuardia, and we would sometimes make two, three, four stops in a day, and events like going to visit a small business," she said. "He was doing rallies all day."
Unless they were heading to the West Coast, most days they would return to headquarters at Trump Tower, Ms. Hicks said.
Ms. Hicks said she knew David Pecker, publisher of American Media Inc., from before she worked with the Trumps, through her previous job.
"I reconnected with him at some point because he was a friend of Mr. Trump's," she said. "I don't recall specifically, but at some point I realized that [they were friends]."
Ms. Hicks said she did not remember being in a meeting with Mr. Pecker but that it was possible. She recalled a phone call.
She described the period leading up to Mr. Trump declaring his candidacy.
"Some time around that first trip, Mr. Trump, I think he ight have been joking but he said I was going to be campaign secretary," she said. "I didn't take it seriously but eventually I spent so much time working on the campaign and I became campaign secretary."
She said it involved facilitating a lot of media interviews, press releases, and "just being a liaison for a lot of different things and helping facilitate anything related to external communications for the campaign."
Ms. Hicks said Keith Schiller was Mr. Trump's bodyguard, and attended events where he served as security liason.
She said Rhona Graff was Mr. Trump's executive assistant and "crucial to how everything ran on the 26th floor."
Ms. Hicks said Ms. Graff "had a lot of institutional knowledge about different projects and Mr. Trump's business relationships, his networks, his like and dislikes in terms of scheduling, and she would help facilitate media engagements for him." She said the relationship between Ms. Graff and Mr. Trump was one of mutual respect.
Hope Hicks, who served as director of strategic communications and communications director in the White House during the Trump administration before taking an advisor post, is now testifying.
Ms. Hicks had done publicity work for Ivanka Trump's fashion brand and was later offered a position with The Trump Organization full-time in 2014. There she handled communications and marketing for the real estate, hospitality, and entertainment businesses. She saw Mr. Trump about once a week, but more after he declared his candidacy in 2015 and she transitioned into more political work.
"He's just the kind of person who's a multitasker and a very hard worker, he's doing a number of things at once," Ms. Hicks said. "If it's a political meeting, he'll want to provide them poll numbers. If it's a real estate meeting, he'll want to provide them with figures about the value of the property."
After a break, attorneys conferred with the judge on admissible evidence.
Ms. Longstreet returned to the witness stand and read aloud several social media posts by then-candidate Trump disputing claims were brought up, including the apology after the Access Hollywood tape was published.
Ms. Longstreet confirmed she would not have independent knowledge of why the social media posts she reviewed were made.
Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal for the Manhattan District Attorney's office, took the witness stand.
Ms. Longstreet has worked on the Trump case for one and a half years. She says she reviews Instagram, Twitter, and Truth Social every day, multiple times a day, and has reviewed between 5,000 and 10,000 social media posts for the case.
The court took a break.
"You've been performing forensic analysis in 2023 about phone records from 2016, and there are intervening events that raise questions about reliability of the evidence?" Mr. Bove asked.
"Yes," Mr. Daus answered.
Mr. Bove outlined a timeline wherein the FBI had possession of Mr. Cohen's phone in 2018, and the district attorney's office came to have it in 2020.
Douglas Daus returned to the witness stand. Mr. Daus works in the Manhattan District Attorney's office processing digital evidence.
Defense attorney Emil Bove is questioning Mr. Daus about chain of custody and procedures, asking if there are gaps in which evidence might become tampered with.
"I want to talk about the data you extracted from CP1 [phone]. You testified yesterday that you did not retain copies from the phone the FBI had seized," Mr. Bove said. "So in the absence of that other copy, you could not compare hashes to see if the data had been manipulated."
Attorney Todd Blanche told the judge the defense objected to a number of exhibits prosecutors wanted to show today, including social media posts, an article that ran in the Washington Post, and the transcript of the infamous Access Hollywood tape.
Mr. Blanche argued that the tape was originally excluded because "the danger of unfair prejudice is extreme" and only correspondence surrounding the tape's impact was meant to be admitted, to show intent and motive.
The judge ultimately allowed the transcript if it was presented without a photo of President Trump.
Justice Merchan started the day by telling attorneys he wanted to clarify that his gag order would not prevent President Trump from testifying, as President Trump told reporters yesterday.
"There may be a misunderstanding," he said. "I want to express to Mr. Trump that you have an absolute right to testify at trial."
"It is a fundamental right that cannot be infringed upon," he said, adding that the gag order only applies to statements made outside the courtroom.
President Trump clarified remarks from yesterday and said "the gag order's not going to stop me from testifying.
"The gag order stops me from talking when people say things about me," he said. "I'm not allowed to respond."
"We're filing, I think today, a constitutional motion to get this out," he said.
President Trump mentioned the Manhattan District Attorney outside the courtroom for the first time in days. The district attorney is not covered by the gag order.
"Yesterday Alvin Bragg sat here all afternoon long, and in the meantime you have violence going on, he's the worst DA in the country," President Trump said. "They must've had 20 different DAs, assistant DAs, in that courtroom over the past couple of days over nothing, nothing."
President Trump claimed the judge was trying to make the case "as salacious" as it could be by "allowing things in that have nothing to do with this case."
President Trump commented on the new jobs report and "really, really bad" economy, blaming the leadership of the country, and told reporters again he'd prefer to be out campaigning.
He said a month ago, his campaign had planned for him to be in Georgia today.
"Right now we're in a courthouse instead of ... I'd say ten states we'd like to be," he said.
The trial of former President Donald Trump continues, as the Manhattan District Attorney has charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records, allegedly to cover up a scheme to influence the 2016 election.
At the center of the case is a $130,000 payment made by former attorney Michael Cohen to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, an adult actress who alleged she had a sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
Keith Davidson, an attorney who represented Ms. Clifford for that deal, testified this week, pushing back on prosecutors' claims that the payment was "hush money," Mr. Davidson rejected the term and said it was "consideration" paid as part of a legal civil settlement.