Hope Hicks Casually Testified Her Email Was Hacked

As you may recall, the day before Hope Hicks resigned, she testified before the House Intelligence Committee, as part of their Russia probe. That was the day she disclosed that her job required her to lie on behalf of the president.

Another piece of her testimony has now leaked, and it's a doozy: Apparently, she has lost access to two of her email accounts after at least one of them was hacked.

Under relatively routine questioning from Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., about her correspondence, Hicks indicated that she could no longer access two accounts: one she used as a member of [Donald] Trump's campaign team and the other a personal account, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the closed meeting of the Intelligence Committee was supposed to remain private.

Hicks, who portrayed herself as not savvy in matters of technology, told lawmakers that one of the accounts was hacked, according to two sources who were in the room. It is unclear if Hicks was referring to the campaign or the personal account.

Her assertion of a hack raises the questions of who might have compromised her account, as well as when, why and what information could have been obtained. But there was no indication from any of the sources that those questions were pursued by the committee, which had limited leverage over Hicks because she was appearing voluntarily and was not under a subpoena for her testimony or records.

Also: Republicans still run the committee, and they have zero interest in holding Donald Trump or any of his minions accountable, so that probably contributed somewhat to the lack of follow-up. Cough.

It's not only unclear whether Hicks "was referring to the campaign or the personal account" regarding which was hacked, but why she no longer has access to either of them. There could be a reasonable explanation to that, e.g. that the campaign email accounts have been deactivated. Of course, a routine deactivation of campaign email accounts is slightly more problematic when that campaign is under investigation for collusion with a foreign adversary.

Or there could be an unreasonable explanation for why she's lost access to the second, supposedly unhacked account. But we don't know, since no explanation was solicited.

In any case, the fact that even one of her emails was hacked is an extraordinary piece of information for a White House Communications Director to casually drop into Congressional committee testimony.

It's possible, of course, that she was lying, hoping that the misdirection would prevent her from having to provide the contents of the communications to and from that account, and/or would allow her to disclaim authorship of those communications if they were recovered in some other way.

It's also possible, however, that she's telling the truth, and someone — possibly and likely a hostile foreign adversary — now has access to the archived communications of one of the United States president's closest confidantes, and the ability to send new communications under her identity.

Think of that: A hacker with the ability to send out communiqués while impersonating the White House Comms Director.

This administration is a shitshow. And every day there is a fresh new hellish example of how truly dangerous their incompetence can be, tangential to their malice.