CONGRESS/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP PEOPLE: “One of the best-known but least visible former members of President Trump’s White House staff is facing an existential question: whether to comply with a congressional subpoena in the coming weeks. The aide, the former communications director Hope Hicks, who left the White House with an enduring mystique that inspired countless news media profiles, is now a private citizen living in California. One of the president’s original campaign aides, she went on to become one of his closest advisers while managing to maintain a personal relationship with him, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. But she has not completely left her time in the White House behind: She appears on more than two dozen pages in the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, mostly in the second volume, which deals with allegations of obstruction of justice against Mr. Trump. Like few others in the White House, Ms. Hicks was witness to some of the president’s angriest moments and most pointed directives about the investigations into the Trump campaign and its contacts with Russians in 2016.”
–Maggie Haberman, “Hope Hicks Left the White House. Now She Must Decide Whether to Talk to Congress.,” The New York Times online, May 23, 2019