Washington • White House communications director Hope Hicks is the latest close adviser to President Donald Trump to refuse to answer questions about the administration or transition period, posed by House investigators as part of their probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Democrats and Republicans emerging from the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing interview with Hicks on Tuesday noted that she resisted answering any questions about events and conversations that occurred since Trump won the election, despite the fact that Trump has not formally invoked executive privilege with the panel.
“No one’s asserting privilege, they’re following the orders of the White House not to answer certain questions,” said panel member Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., who said he believed that the panel should serve Hicks with a subpoena, as it did with former White House strategist Stephen Bannon last month when he refused to answer similar questions.
“There’s no Hope to get all our answers,” Quigley, noting the obvious pun and adding: “tip your servers.”
Hicks’s refusal to answer questions about the Trump administration’s tenure suggests lawmakers will have a difficult time learning her side of a key story: the drafting of a misleading statement to explain an unorthodox meeting at the Trump Tower in Manhattan between top Trump campaign members and a Russian lawyer during the 2016 race.
Hicks works as the White House communications director, but her proximity to Trump and long history of working with the Trump family make her testimony potentially valuable to the panel’s probe of Russian interference.
Republican panel members seemed far less agitated by Hicks’s reluctance to answer questions than they were by Bannon’s. The committee is currently weighing whether to hold Bannon in contempt for his continued silence, under subpoena, when faced with questions about the transition period the Trump administration has not already approved. But after five hours of interviewing her Tuesday, the Republican panel leaders showed no signs of being eager to take legal steps to force Hicks to answer more of their queries.
Questions to Hicks about the transition period and the Trump White House “need to be hammered out by the majority, the minority, and the White House,” said Rep. Thomas J. Rooney, R-Fla., one of the members deputized to help run the panel’s Russia probe. Rooney added that “it’s not really in my purview about what that agreement is, or was, or should be.”
On Monday, Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Tex., the top Republican on the House’s Russia probe, said he was not aware of any deal with Hicks that would limit the scope of the interview. He also noted that he “would not be surprised” if Hicks refused to answer questions on topics she believed the president might later want to invoke executive privilege, as Bannon and attorney general Jeff Sessions have done.
Sessions never faced official congressional censure. But several Republican and Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee believe they must issue a contempt citation for Bannon to demonstrate to future witnesses that congressional subpoenas must be complied with. The decision depends on Conaway and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., reaching an agreement, but as of Monday night, the two had not yet met to discuss the issue, according to Conaway.
Hicks initially was expected to speak with the House Intelligence Committee last month, but her interview was canceled in the wake of the dramatic standoff with Bannon that resulted in his subpoena.
The panel is also grappling over what to do about former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. He initially claimed that he was unprepared to answer the committee’s questions and needed more time but later informed the panel he would not return to complete his interview.
Hicks has already spoken with special counsel Robert Mueller team.
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