Top Trump aide Hope Hicks to testify before Jan 6 committee

Hicks’s participation shows extent Trump’s inner circle has crumbled

One of Donald Trump’s onetime closest White House advisers will testify before the Jan 6 committee on Tuesday in a sign that his once tight circle of advisers has now splintered following the attack on the Capitol.

Hope Hicks will meet with the committee’s lawmakers today, NBC News reported, citing a source familiar with the proceedings. Her testimony represents one of the highest-ranking defections in the Trump sphere.

Ms Hicks served a number of roles under Mr Trump after joining his campaing in the early days of the 2016 cycle. She served as White House communications director for a time before ending her service to Mr Trump less than a week after Jan 6 while at the time serving as a “senior counselor”.

She was one of the few high-ranking Trump loyalists, outside of members of his own family, to make it through virtually the entire term of Donald Trump’s presidency. Her breaking point finally came in the wave of resignations that followed the attack on the Capitol, which included many high-ranking officials such as Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Ms Hicks’s testimony will be far from alone in terms of accounts from Trump White House personnel gathered by the committee, however. Other White House figures including Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Pat Cipollone and others have already testified before the committee, as have aides to Mark Meadows and others.

Her testimony is likely a sign, however, that she will not be returning to Mr Trump’s inner circle any time soon even as he plots a 2024 run; her proximity to the ex-president during the final days of the administration, however, means she remains a valuable witness for the committee which concluded public hearings earlier this month.

Mr Trump continues to insist that the January 6 committee’s investigation is a partisan witch hunt, a claim that has been severely undercut by the panel’s focus nearly entirely on testimony from Republican witnesses and in particular members of his own administration.

The committee’s investigation proceeds alongside the Justice Department’s January 6 probe, which has been slow-moving to engulf anyone in the White House but is generally thought to be trending in that direction given the testimony of a top aide to Mike Pence and others in recent months.