Hope Hicks, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump, was angry with his colleagues in the White House on January 6, 2021, protesting that “we all look like domestic terrorists now” and will not be able to find a new job as a result. .
Text messages released by the House select committee investigating the attack show Hicks was texting Julie Radford, her former chief of staff to Ivanka Trump, as Trump supporters surrounded the US Capitol.
Hicks complained that the rebellion had destroyed the workforce.
“One day, he ended all future opportunities that didn’t include involvement in the Proud Boys chapter,” said Hicks, referring to the president and the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys.
“Yes,” replied Radford.
“And all of us who don’t have a job will continue to be unemployed,” Hicks added. “I became angry and angry.”
“We all look like domestic terrorists now,” he added.
Radford replied: “Oh yes, I’ve been crying for an hour.”
“Not dramatic, but we’re all bastards,” Hicks said in another message, adding that “Alyssa looks like a genius” for leaving, referring to Alyssa Farah Griffin, who resigned as White House communications director weeks after Trump. lost the 2020 election.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI via Getty Images
Later that day, Hicks texted Radford: “Attack the VP? Wtf is wrong with him?”
During the unrest at the Capitol, Trump tweeted that his vice president, Mike Pence, “didn’t have the guts” to help him overturn the election. Pence was at the Capitol to participate in the certification of Electoral College results; he was forced to flee as Trump supporters, some of whom called for him to be hanged, were forced into the building.
Hicks was interviewed by the committee Jan. 6 in testimony aired at a public hearing late last month. He says there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and he worries that Trump is tarnishing his legacy by spreading disinformation about the results.
When he expressed those concerns to Trump, he said, Trump said something like, “‘You know, nobody’s going to care about my legacy if I lose, so it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to win.'”
After he left the Trump administration, Hicks worked on the US Senate campaign of Pennsylvania hedge fund executive David McCormick, who lost to Trump-endorsed candidate Mehmet Oz in the Republican primary.