Legal experts explain 'darker' reason Trump's 'surrogate daughter' cried on stand at trial

Former Donald Trump aide Hope Hicks wept in court on Friday as she testified in the criminal case against someone she still deeply respects, and some legal experts have suggested what those tears really mean.

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin, a former litigator, appeared in court and saw Hicks crying. She characterized it this way:

"We just took a brief break because the most composed woman in Trump’s orbit — Hope Hicks — broke down on the stand right as cross examination started. Why would Hicks burst into tears—and why is she struggling to keep it together now?" she asked on Friday.

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According to Rubin's analysis, there "are a couple of theories floating around among journalists watching with me."

"One is that being asked about the Trump family — who plucked her from a private PR firm & turned her into a star — overwhelmed her. Her affection for Trump the man is still evident," Rubin said.

The other possibility, Rubin said, is "darker."

"The other is darker. Hicks isn’t out to hurt Trump, but today, she revealed that Trump shared with her that he spoke with Cohen in Feb. 2018, the morning after Cohen told [The New York Times] that he paid Stormy Daniels without Trump’s knowledge," she wrote. "Trump told Hicks that Cohen had made the payment to protect Trump from false allegations, never told anyone about it, and did it out of the goodness of his own heart."

Then, according to Rubin, when "asked whether that was consistent with the Cohen she knew, she said that it was not."

"'I did not know Michael to be an especially charitable or selfless person; he is a kind of person who seeks credit,' Hicks testified," according to Rubin. "In other words, without having to call Trump a liar, Hicks admitted the story Trump told her was a dubious one."

Then things got worse, according to Rubin.

"Perhaps even worse, during that same conversation, Trump asked her how she thought the Times story was playing and wondered aloud whether it would have been better for the story to have come out during the campaign or when it had, concluding the real-life timing had been better," Rubin wrote. "That’s where the prosecutors’ direct examination of Hicks ended and within a minute or two, her emotions bubbled over."

In conclusion, Rubin wrote, "None of us can say why Hope cried or what’s going through her head."

"But as mysterious as she is, I can’t imagine that as she criss-crossed America at Trump’s side, she ever imagined testifying in a criminal case against a man who saw her as a surrogate daughter."

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance echoed those sentiments.

"Witnesses cry or get emotional on the stand for a lot of different reasons. But here, given Hope Hick's relationship with Trump, it suggests that because she's under oath, she's had to reveal facts she'd rather have left unsaid & she's concerned she's damaged Trump," she wrote on Friday. "One of the jury's jobs is to assess the credibility of witnesses. Details like this are not lost on them. Anything she's said that casts Trump in a poor light is something she'd rather not have had to say, which makes her believable. And she's corroborated some important details."