CNN’s Honig Says Tearful Hope Hicks Testimony Was Not Nail In Trump Coffin: ‘I Respectfully Dissent’

Hope Hicks’ tearful testimony in the Manhattan hush money trial was a “strong piece of evidence” for the prosecution but not the nail in Donald Trump’s legal coffin, according to CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig.

Hicks was White House communications director for Trump through 2018.

During Friday’s proceedings, Hicks seemed to tie Trump’s attempt to pay off porn actress Stormy Daniels to his concerns about how news of his alleged affair could affect the 2016 election. She said:

And I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was, it was better to be dealing with it now and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.

Honig said her statement was “a strong piece of evidence for the prosecution.”  He added, “I do respectfully dissent from the ‘this is it, nail in the coffin, devastating game-over moment.’ It helps them on a piece of the case, but there’s much more to her testimony and much more to this case, than that.”

Earlier in his interview with Michael Smerconish, Honig said Hicks’ tears on the stand weren’t due to something “specific she testified about. I don’t buy that,” he said. “I’ve seen plenty of people take the stand in a courtroom. Testifying is scary. It’s emotional.”

“She’s sitting there in front of a person who she respected and admired, who she sort of grew up under, became a professional under. It’s a dramatic moment,” he continued. “And, if you look at the actual moment in the transcript where it says she starts crying, there’s nothing much going on.”

Later, Honig added:

She’s presumably crying because she’s remembering the good old days before everything hit the fan, that’s exactly how I see it, Michael.

And it’s also, she’s not crying on the other side because Donald Trump’s lawyers have got, have extracted some sort of concession from her, brow-beating her, like you would see in the movies, and the witness just breaks down.

She’s going back to a time in her life 10-plus, almost ten years ago now, when she was 20-something and Donald Trump started employing her, and she, sort of, came up through the ranks. I mean, you can understand how it’s emotional.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Watch the clip above via CNN.