In a rare, on-the-record accounting of some of the House Intelligence committee’s secret, closed-door proceedings, two members of the House Intelligence Committee explained to CBS News what led White House communications director Hope Hicks to say her work for President Trump occasionally required her to tell “white lies.” Hicks testified for nine hours Tuesday as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — and announced one day later she will be resigning, for reasons the White House said were unrelated to her testimony.
In a phone interview on Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Florida, fired an opening salvo by saying the line of questioning began with “a bullsh*t question” posed by a Democrat.
“The whole line of questioning was a trap,” said Rooney, who recently announced he would not run for re-election. “They sent her down a rabbit hole that she could not get out of. And it was completely unfair.”
In a separate interview, the Democrat who led the questioning, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California, fired back, “it’s a question that is asked of witnesses every day across America – and most people don’t have a hard time answering it.”
After Hicks’ interview on Tuesday concluded, The New York Times first reported that Hicks said her work for Mr. Trump occasionally required her to tell “white lies,” but that she had not lied about matters related to ongoing Russia investigations. A committee official later confirmed the Times’ reporting to CBS News.
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According to Swalwell, Hicks then consulted for a second time with her lawyer, again said she had never lied about any matter related to the Russia investigations, and added that she never “knowingly” lied for Mr. Trump, apart from some “white lies” related to his availability or equivalent trivialities.
Rooney said Hicks repeated the words “white lies” after another member first said them. Swalwell said he never used the phrase.
After Hicks provided that answer, Rooney said Swalwell “went through the phone book,” asking Hicks whether a “litany of 50” people, including “the entire Trump family,” had ever asked Hicks to lie. The list of names, both Rooney and Swalwell said, included Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Michael Cohen and others. Swalwell also asked Hicks whether she heard Mr. Trump ask others to lie for him.
Hicks gave a “blanket” response by declining to answer in each instance, Rooney said. “She wasn’t going to respond to those questions – and she shouldn’t have,” Rooney said.
Swalwell said the questions were not only merited, but ultimately illustrative, because Hicks refused to answer in every case but one – about former national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn. In that one case, Swalwell said, Hicks responded that Flynn never asked her to lie for him “in the campaign.”
“What about during the transition,” he says he asked, and said Hicks replied Flynn had asked her to present something to be true that she later learned to be false. Her willingness to respond in Flynn’s case and not in others, Swalwell said, suggested she might have been choosing whom to protect.
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- Discussion
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Hope Hicks refused to answer when asked if the following people had asked her to lie:
Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Michael Cohen
…and “a litany” of others https://t.co/lNcrcP6S0k
— Olivia Victoria Gazis (@Olivia_Gazis) March 1, 2018
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