Picture
Perfect: Arrogant, Nasty, Smug Stubbornness
(Hope
Hicks)
Post for Today: Hope Hicks Refused to Answer Questions 155
Times in Closed-Door Testimony
(Edited to fit the Blog format in part
below):
Hope Hicks, was a loyal and long-serving
aide of President Donald Trump, was directed by the White House not to answer
questions related to her time in the administration.
That meant she declined to
offer any additional information about instances of possible obstruction of
justice raised in Robert Mueller’s report, such as Trump’s firing of former FBI
director James Comey and the president’s attempts to fire Mueller.
Perhaps the only nugget of information
that Democrats mined from Hicks related to that reference to firing Mueller was
her admission that she found it “odd that Trump requested Corey Lewandowski, his
former campaign manager and not a White House employee,” deliver a letter to
then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructing him to give a speech
undermining the Mueller investigation.
During the course of the eight-hour
examination, Hicks’ legal team repeatedly invoked a claim of “absolute
immunity” (I note: Not a binding legal term in any legal sense), and blocked her
response to questions by objecting in 155 separate instances (re: Judiciary Committee record)
Her legal team included two of her
personal attorneys and three attorneys from the administration — blocked
questions even tangentially related to her White House service, including where
she sat relative to the Oval Office.
Hicks frequently said she did not recall
certain details, and was vague in some of her responses. At one point, she did
confirm to Democrats that Trump directed her to issue a statement denying that
he had any relationship with Karen McDougal — the former model who was paid
$150,000 by former Trump fixer Michael Cohen to stay silent about an alleged
affair in the lead-up to the 2016 election. On one occasion, Hicks defended the
campaign’s use of materials from the WikiLeaks hack.
She simply said: “We used publicly
available information in the course of the campaign … It is not my position
that we benefited from those emails.”
My 2 cents: Refusing to answer questions as Hicks did by citing a nonsense reason “absolute immunity” that I noted above IS not in U.S. law anywhere, is NOT the same as pleading protection under the 5th Amendment which is her right.
More on Types of Immunity:
Qualified immunity: A legal doctrine that shields government officials from being sued for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity, unless “their actions violated clearly established federal law or constitutional rights.” Qualified immunity protects officials who make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions, but “it does not protect those who are plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”
Absolute immunity: A form of legal immunity for government officials that confers total immunity from criminal prosecution and lawsuits so long as they are acting within the scope of their duties. It is a contrast from qualified immunity, which only applies if specified conditions are met.
Notes on Both: The merits of the immunity doctrine are largely unsettled and reflect a long-standing disagreement between the Executive Branch and Congress. Don McGahn’s dilemma.
Let’s face it: Lying per se is NOT a crime, but lying to hide a crime or cover up a crime is a serious crime and that’s what we have here.
Trump always claims his total and complete innocence yet he pulls every stunt he can to block the truth – what a huge disconnect and it does NOT serve the interest of justice by any stretch of imagination.
Thanks for stopping by.
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