Winter Weather Update Dec 28,2022

The Diamondbacks rewarded a beekeeper who ended the delay of a game by letting him throw the first pitch in one of the most bizarre scenes at a baseball field.

It's not clear what longtime aide Hope Hicks might tell the jury in Donald Trump's hush money case, but a close friend made clear that she's not eager to testify against her former boss.

The former White House official could testify as early as Friday, and while she hasn't given details about what she'll say, several sources close to her made clear that she was frustrated and angry about being called to testify — and described the trial as a waste of time and money.

“This feels like something she’s being forced to do,” one former senior administration official who is close to her told the Washington Post. “She still has warm feelings toward the president and a lot of admiration for him.”

The 35-year-old Hicks, a former Trump Organization staffer who was one of his earliest campaign hires, was "in and out" of an August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower to discuss the National Enquirer's role in identifying and killing damaging stories, according to testimony from former publisher David Pecker.

The Post also contacted Hicks to discuss the newspaper's impending publication of the "Access Hollywood" story in October 2016, which revealed Trump on tape bragging about molesting women, and prosecutors have alleged that recording played a key role in the decision to pay hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels — which eventually fell under prosecution.

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“She was there for everything, so they are going to ask her questions,” said Hogan Gidley, a friend of Hicks who served as Trump’s principal deputy press secretary. “I know Hope, I talk to Hope, and she wants nothing but the best for Donald Trump and his family.”

Hicks and Trump have not spoken since 2022, when she was called before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, although a former adviser said their relationship remained "cordial."

But the former president and his family were reportedly unhappy with her candor in that testimony.

"[Trump] said something along the lines of, you know, ‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose, so that won’t matter — the only thing that matters is winning,'" Hicks told congressional investigators under oath.

The Trump family, especially Ivanka, were especially unhappy with text messages Hicks sent after Jan. 6 that she shared with the committee.

“In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter," Hicks said in one of those messages.

The regulator set to hear a campaign finance complaint about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has a yard sign for the senator's campaign at his house, reported the San Antonio Current on Wednesday.

"Trey Trainor, an attorney serving on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the panel scheduled to hear the complaint — recently retweeted a photo his wife Lucy Trainor shared of a yard sign outside their Austin-area home promoting the Texas Republican's campaign for a third term in the U.S. Senate," said the report. "'Got my new ⁦@tedcruz⁩ yard sign installed today,' Lucy Trainor tweeted April 19, 10 days after a pair of campaign-finance watchdogs filed their FEC complaint against Cruz. Trey Trainor retweeted the image the same day his wife posted it."

Per federal contribution records, Trainor also made three contributions to Cruz in 2013, totaling to $325.

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"Trainor's retweet follows last month's report by the Current that FEC Chairman Sean J. Cooksey served as Cruz's deputy chief counsel in 2018. From 2019 until joining the FEC in 2020, Cooksey served as general counsel for Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a GOP hardliner frequently aligned with Cruz," noted the report. "Both Trainor and Cooksey are Trump appointees to the six-member FEC, which is comprised of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats."

The complaint in question stems from iHeartMedia, which hosts Cruz's podcast, making a $630,000 payment to Truth and Courage PAC, which supports Cruz. Senate rules prohibit senators from accepting greater than "nominal value" gifts from companies that employ lobbyists, as iHeartMedia does.

Cruz, for his part, denies that anything about this arrangement is unlawful.

The senator has personally challenged campaign finance laws in the past. For instance, in 2022, after he ran afoul of a law that limited how much he could pay himself back with campaign contributions for money he loaned to his own campaign, he got the Supreme Court to toss out the law altogether.