January 6 panel interviews former Donald Trump aide Hope Hicks

The House January 6 committee is interviewing Hope Hicks, a longtime aide to former President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

Tuesday’s interview comes as the investigation is winding down and as the panel has subpoenaed Trump for an interview in the coming weeks. The person requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

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Hicks didn’t have a significant impact on how the White House handled the January 6, 2021 uprising, when hundreds of Trump backers stormed the U.S. Capitol and disrupted the declaration of President Joe Biden’s victory. The veteran Trump communications assistant was still there at the time, although she later left the White House.

Hicks had nonetheless been a trusted adviser to Trump. And, according to CNN, who received copies of messages turned up by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, she was kept informed about several texts and emails that day before to the then-speech president’s outside the White House and before the violence started.

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Hicks has experience with investigations involving her previous boss. She provided crucial information to the special counsel’s office concerning Trump’s attempts to hinder the inquiry as a key witness in the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. However, after the release of Mueller’s report in 2019, when House Democrats began looking into the former president, she refused to speak with them about her tenure in the White House, citing worries about her privilege.

The New York Times first reported Hicks’ interview.

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The January 6 panel proved that Trump was frequently informed by some of his closest advisers that he had lost the 2020 election after interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses, including numerous White House staff members. He persisted in making up stories about massive electoral fraud though, and his supporters who stormed the Capitol did the same.

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The nine-member panel issued a letter to Trump’s lawyers late last week demanding his testimony, either at the Capitol or by videoconference, “beginning on or about” November 14 and continuing for multiple days if necessary. The letter also outlined a sweeping request for documents, including personal communications between Trump and members of Congress as well as extremist groups.

Trump has not yet responded to the subpoena.

The committee held nine hearings this year and is expected to come out with a final report by the end of the year.