One of former President Trump's most senior aides took the stand today during his

hush money trial in New York. Hope Hicks served as Mr. Trump's press

secretary during the 2016 campaign and was his White House Communications Director.

On the stand, she detailed how Trump and his inner circle handled the revelations about alleged

extramarital affairs and the payments made to bury those stories.

Andrea Bernstein is covering the former president's legal battles for NPR and was in the

courthouse today and she joins us now Andrea so nice to see you again during the

prosecution's questioning today they delved into what happened in the

campaign when that infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped.

What did we learn from Hope Hicks about that today?

Right, so she was the person to first hear about that

from the Washington Post, which asked her for a comment on the story they were about to run.

And she, there was an email shown that she had sent a campaign leadership where she had suggested

deny, deny, deny, deny deny and as she read that on the

stand she sort of laughed because she realized that they weren't going to be able to do

that and she talked about how she went upstairs and there was the sort of a campaign

brain trust preparing

Trump for the debate. He saw all of them ask them what they were talking about and

when he learned about the tape he said well that doesn't sound like something

that I would say but obviously it was

and that is story is being told to jurors because it helps set the the template for how the campaign then had to go into

panic mode and then Stormy Daniel's story becomes even more fraught for them.

...