Hope Hicks tops GQ list of most powerful in Trump’s Washington

White House communications director Hope Hicks has been named the most powerful person in Washington, D.C., by GQ, the magazine’s website announced Thursday.

Hicks, the 29-year-old former public relations official for Ivanka Trump’s brand, took over for Anthony Scaramucci after his short-lived stint as communications director last year. Now Hicks is one of Trump’s most trusted aides and has lasted longer in the administration than many others have.

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“Hope is feared and revered in the West Wing,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told GQ. 

“To the public, she remains in the background,” she added. “To the president, she is front and center.”

Hicks has so far avoided much of the public scrutiny faced by other White House aides, allowing her to outlast top aides to the president such as former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Stephen Bannon.

Still, her proximity to Trump has ensnared her in the ongoing investigations into Russia’s election interference and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. In January, the House Intelligence Committee requested testimony from Hicks regarding her time in the Trump administration and campaign.

Hicks has also come up in the special counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller.

In January, The New York Times reported that a former spokesman for President Trump’s legal team, Mark Corallo, may have planned to testify that Hicks may have been plotting to obstruct justice alongside Trump by deleting emails pertaining to Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.

“The idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false,” Hicks’s lawyer, Robert Trout, told the Times last month.

Hicks also made headlines this month when it was revealed she was in a relationship with Rob Porter, the now-ousted White House staff secretary accused by his two ex-wives of domestic abuse.