Hicks repeatedly blocked by White House from answering Judiciary questions

Source: The Hill | June 20, 2019 | Morgan Chalfant

The House Judiciary Committee has released a transcript of a closed-door interview with former Trump aide Hope Hicks, showing White House lawyers repeatedly blocking her from answering questions about her work in the administration.

Hicks interviewed privately with the panel for nearly eight hours on Wednesday as part of its sweeping investigation into President Trump and his associates. She was compelled to testify under subpoena.

The transcript, which stretches 273 pages long, shows Trump administration lawyers repeatedly blocking Hicks from answering questions about her time in the White House by invoking the argument she is immune from compelled congressional testimony on the subject – a tactic that infuriated Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday.

White House lawyers blocked Hicks from answering questions 155 times, according to the committee, including numerous questions about alleged episodes of obstruction by President Trump that are laid out in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Hicks did, however, answer several questions about her work on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the details laid out in the first volume of Mueller’s report on Russian interference.

The transcript shows that the daylong interview with Hicks, whose testimony is featured throughout Mueller’s report, produced little new information. Meanwhile, it cements the White House’s efforts to thwart the Democrat-led investigation, which Trump has cast as an attempted “do over” of Mueller’s report.

In one exchange, Hicks said she had not read the Mueller report but that she had “lived” it.

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