Just before White House Communications Director Hope Hicks was to head into a closed-door hearing with the House Intelligence Committee, one of its members, Rep. Eric Swalwell said the committee does not confirm witnesses, but he did acknowledge that she would be a relevant witness.
"It is no secret that Hope Hicks is a relevant witness for us," the California Democrat told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "She is one of the closest advisers to the president. That was the case throughout the campaign, the transition, and all the way up until today."
Hicks, he added, "certainly has knowledge about what the president knew about Russian interference, any directives he may have made in her presence and, of course, the June 9 meeting his son took one floor below his office in Trump Tower back in 2016, with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton."
Hicks was not in the room during the meeting at Trump Tower, Swalwell conceded, but a year later, "she was a central part of the response, the changing responses that came from Donald Trump Jr. seem to be dictated by his father, that she was a part of."
Swalwell said he hopes Hicks will be forthcoming, rather than invoke executive privileges like others from Trump's campaign and White House have done.
Meanwhile, White House aide Carter Page, the former campaign aide who is at the center of two memos coming from the Intelligence Committee, remains a public figure, and Swalwell noted that a dossier that came into play for surveilling him was just part of the evidence used.
"If you're not surveilling a guy who had been under previous surveillance for dealing with Russian spies and having a line to the Kremlin and traveled to Russia while they were interfering in our election, I don't know who you would surveil," said Swalwell.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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