Hope Hicks, one of President’s Trump’s longest serving aides, will leave the White House next week, according to two administration sources, amid a general exodus of West Wing staff before Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Hicks, 32, is one of the survivors from the early days of the 2016 campaign and worked for the Trump Organization before that.
As one of the president’s most trusted confidants, insiders said they had expected her to continue working for Trump after leaving the White House.
A senior administration official said news of her departure triggered unfounded rumors that she was resigning in protest at the attack on the United States Capitol on Wednesday by Trump supporters but that Hicks had told colleagues that was not the case.
“The majority of staff will be out by next Friday. That’s normal,” said the official. “We have to off board, hand over computers, have an ethics debriefing, and that can’t happen just on the last day, the 19th.
“She is leaving … as is everyone else.”
Two Cabinet secretaries and a string of officials left the administration this week in protest of the way Trump called on supporters to march on the Capitol and then failed to defuse their anger.
At the same time, officials have been departing as part of the usual transition process.
Hicks was an early campaign hire, arriving from Ivanka Trump’s clothing line and rising to become White House communications director before leaving in early 2018. For three years, she helped shape Trump’s message, and their close relationship meant many insiders viewed her as something of a surrogate daughter.
She said that she would return when the cloud of the Russia investigation had lifted, and she did, resuming a role in the West Wing in February 2019 once impeachment proceedings had finished.
