Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is reportedly returning to the Trump Administration, departing her job as an executive at Fox Corporation and taking up a new role as “senior advisor” to President Donald Trump.
ABC News reports that Hicks, “Trump’s most trusted and longest serving aide, is expected to return to the administration in the coming weeks,” and that she will not be returning to the White House communications department, although her experience is largely in public and media relations. Instead, she’ll be serving under White House senior aide — and presidential son-in-law — Jared Kushner, who handles much of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy.
Hicks has been with President Donald Trump for years and joined Trump’s presidential campaign from the Trump Corporation, where she’d worked since August of 2014, per her official bio. After earning her stripes on the Trump campaign as press secretary, she joined the Trump transition team in the communications department and fulfilled a number of roles in the Trump White House until finally landing in the White House communications office, serving as the “White House Director of Strategic Communications.”
Hicks left the White House in 2018 amid Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump campaign officials colluded with representatives of the Russian government to undermine the 2016 presidential election and since then, ABC News says, “she has served as the head of communications for the Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, among other entities owned by Rupert Murdoch.”
As communications director, Hicks was a central figure during the initial stages of Mueller’s investigation. She testified several times before various House and Senate committees in addition to speaking with Mueller’s investigators. At one point, Hicks even became the central figure in a battle over Executive privilege and immunity between Congress and the White House when she and her attorneys agreed to answer questions about her time on the Trump 2016 presidential campaign but not her time serving as a presidential advisor.
It was after a nine-hour marathon House Intelligence Committee hearing that Hicks resigned her White House position and went West (though the Trump White House said, at the time, that she had been planning to move on from her job for “months” before the Democrats started in on her). The interaction reportedly left Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) determined to investigate and corner the White House.
“This is a breathtakingly broad claim a privilege that I don’t think any court would sustain, and I think the White House knows that. This is not executive privilege, this is executive stonewalling,” he told press at the time, fuming.
Hicks’ return to the White House may signal that the Trump Administration is looking to regroup and reinstitute order following the chaos that reigned during the House impeachment inquiry and the Senate impeachment trial. Since late 2018, the Trump White House has been plagued by staff changes and swirling controversy, and Hicks, who worked well with Trump at his signature organization and stayed steadfast during the first, difficult year of the Trump Administration, is a trustworthy, familiar individual for President Trump.