Hope Hicks, a former longtime adviser to Donald Trump, took the witness stand Friday in his criminal trial, where prosecutors are expected to question her about her knowledge of hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Hicks, who served as White House communications director, is the first close Trump adviser to testify in the case, which accuses the Republican former president of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by silencing women who claimed to have sexual encounters with him.

Hicks, who is is testifying for the prosecution under a subpoena, acknowledged she was “really nervous” after stepping up to the microphone. Referring to her former boss as “Mr. Trump,” she told the court she last communicated with him in the summer or fall of 2022.

While no longer in Trump’s inner circle, Hicks spoke about the former president in glowing terms as the prosecutor began questioning her about her background. Hicks complimented Trump multiple times in the first few minutes of her testimony, describing him as a “very good multitasker, a very hard worker.”

Hicks served as Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and was one of a small number of early campaign staffers who joined his administration.

Hicks testified that she first heard Stormy Daniels’ name uttered on Trump’s plane about a year before Michael Cohen struck a deal with the porn actor to silence her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

In November 2015, Hicks said, she heard Trump and some of his security detail “telling a story about a celebrity golf tournament and some of the participants in the tournament and her name came up.”

The way the story went, Daniels “was there with one of the other participants that Mr. Trump played with that day,” Hicks testified.

In the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006.

Trump denies having sex with Daniels.

Hicks testified Friday that she asked Cohen to chase down a rumor about another potentially damaging tape.

Hicks said she wanted to be proactive in seeking out the supposed tape because “I did not want anyone to be blindsided.”

She asked Cohen to call a friend of his in the media — whom she did not identify — and ask about the existence of the tape and, if there was a tape, when the campaign could expect it to be published.

“There was no such tape regardless, but he sort of chased that down for me,” Hicks said.

Hicks also testified that the political firestorm that ensued after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape was so strong, it knocked an actual storm out of the headlines.

“It was intense. It dominated coverage, I would say, for the 36 hours leading up to the debate,” she said, referring to an important debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton that Donald Trump had been preparing for when the news broke.

Hicks said that at the time she received an email from a Washington Post reporter around 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2016, informing her of the looming publication of a story revealing the tape, the news was dominated by a Category 4 hurricane that was charging toward the east coast.

“I don’t think anybody remembers” where that hurricane hit, Hicks said.

Hurricane Matthew, which had hit Haiti and Cuba as a Category 4 storm earlier in the week, made landfall in the U.S. in South Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane on Oct. 8, the day after the tape was made public.

Hicks also testified that Trump’s initial opinion on the tape’s leak was that he felt “this wasn’t good, but it was also like two guys talking privately, locker room talk.”

“It wasn’t anything to get so upset over,” she said of Trump’s feelings. “Certainly he didn’t want to upset anybody. He felt like this was pretty standard stuff for two guys chatting with each other.”

Prosecutors read through a series of statements on Friday put out by prominent Republicans — including U.S. Sens. John McCain and Mitt Romney — in response to the “Access Hollywood” tape, asking Hicks whether she recalled the various condemnations.

She appeared increasingly irritated by the line of questioning as it went on.

Asked about remarks from then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan calling the tape “sickening,” Hicks replied tersely: “I don’t remember that but it sounds like something he would say.”

Prosecutors asked Hicks to describe her reaction to learning about the tape’s existence from a reporter seeking comment.

“I was concerned, very concerned,” Hicks said, speaking slowly. “Yeah. I was concerned about the contents of the email. I was concerned about the lack of time to respond. I was concerned that we had a transcript but not the tape. There was a lot at play.”

Hicks said she forwarded the request to other campaign leadership, including Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, with the recommendation to “deny, deny, deny.”

The transcript of the conversation, which was attached in an email from a Washington Post reporter, was not read aloud in court but was shown on monitors visible to jurors. Hicks was asked to read portions of the transcript to herself before responding.

Trump sat stone-faced as the transcript appeared on screen, whispering at points to his lawyers.

Hicks testified Friday that she doesn’t remember if she was involved in the August 2015 meeting where David Pecker, then publisher of the National Enquirer, said he told Trump and Cohen he’d be the “eyes and ears” of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“I don’t have a recollection of that, but it’s certainly possible,” Hicks said.

Pecker testified last week that Hicks was present for some of the meeting, and Hicks said Friday that she’d frequently pop in and out of Trump’s office while he was meeting with other people.

Hicks recalled some of Trump’s other interactions with Pecker, including phone calls in which the then-candidate praised the publisher for articles critical of his political rivals.

She testified that she had a “vivid recollection” of hearing Trump on the phone with Pecker congratulating him on a National Enquirer article about medical malpractice allegations against Dr. Ben Carson. Another time, Trump called Pecker to compliment a negative article about U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Mr. Trump was just congratulating him on the great reporting,” Hicks testified. Sometimes he would say things like “This is Pulitzer worthy,” Hicks added.

Before Hicks took the stand on Friday, the court saw and heard some of Trump’s responses to the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in October 2016.

They included a video he posted to Twitter, now known as the social platform X, in which he apologized and called the video a “distraction from important issues we face today,” and a tweet in which he called his comments in the 2005 video “locker room remarks.”

Jurors also heard about a March 2023 Truth Social post in which Trump said he “did nothing wrong” and included a derogatory nickname for Stormy Daniels. In the post, he referred to Michael Cohen, his ex-lawyer, as a “convicted liar and felon jailbird” and stated: “Never had an affair with her. Just another false acquisition by a sleazebag.”

In another social media post, he maintained “Nothing ever happened with these women” and “No one has more respect for women than me.”

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo used the start of Hicks’ testimony Friday to give jurors a window into Trump’s real estate company, the Trump Organization, including its personnel and even the physical layout of its offices.

Colangelo also quizzed her on other Trump Organization figures, including Trump’s longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller, his former executive assistant Rhona Graff, ex-chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and ex-lawyer turned key trial figure Michael Cohen. He also asked her to describe what she meant by the “26th floor,” the section of Trump Tower where Trump and other executives had their offices.

Hicks also described the sudden transition from working for the Trump Organization to working for Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Mr. Trump one day said we’re going to Iowa and I didn’t really know why,” Hicks recalled.

When Trump later said she would be his press secretary, Hicks said her first thought was that he “might be joking.”

“I had no experience and worked at the company, not the campaign, so I didn’t take it very seriously,” she said. “Eventually I started spending so much time on the campaign that I became a member of the campaign and I was the press secretary.”

HICKS CALLS TRUMP ‘A VERY HARD WORKER’

After taking the stand in Trump’s hush money trial Friday morning, Hicks spoke about the former president in glowing terms, complimenting him multiple times in the first few minutes of her testimony.

She described him as a “very good multi-tasker, a very hard worker.”

Asked by Colangelo who she reported to while working as communications director for the Trump Organization, Hicks said, “Everybody that works there in some sense reports to Mr. Trump. It’s a big successful company but it’s really run like a small family business in some ways.”

Hicks, who currently has her own communications consulting firm, is testifying under a subpoena and, unlike other former Trump employees, is paying her lawyers herself.

Her testimony on the trial’s 11th day was the latest in a frenzied second week of witness testimony and followed that of forensic analyst Douglas Daus and paralegal Georgia Longstreet.