Trump-Omarosa feud turns to secrecy deal
President says ex-aide violated an NDA; she says she never signed one
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s feud with former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman escalated Tuesday with the president calling her “a dog,” while his re-election campaign took action to enforce a nondisclosure agreement she signed during the 2016 race.
That action, seeking arbitration in New York, comes as Manigault Newman continued a publicity tour for her book released Tuesday on her 15-year association with Trump on reality television, on his campaign and in the White House — “Unhinged,” a title that reflects how she now describes him.
As part of that promotion, she released another recording of her interactions with Trump and colleagues, the latest allegedly of a discussion she and two other black women on the 2016 campaign had about reports that Trump was on tape using a racial slur. After that release, the campaign took action alleging she’d violated her earlier confidentiality agreement.
Manigault Newman, on MSNBC, denied that. The president, she said, “is trying to silence me. So what is he afraid of?”
Trump, she added, “should be afraid of being exposed as the misogynist and bigot and racist that he is.”
The president in response ratcheted up his attacks — and drew widespread condemnation — when he referred to her in a tweet early Tuesday as a “dog.”
“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog,” he tweeted.
Manigault Newman’s claims, and the aggressive pushback from the president and his campaign, have drawn new attention to the nondisclosure agreements that Trump has demanded of campaign and White House aides. While he routinely used them in his businesses to prevent damaging disclosures, so-called NDAs are virtually unknown for political aides and public officials — contrary to the contention of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders Tuesday that they’re common.
Manigault Newman, who had been the highest-ranking black and one of the few minorities in the Trump White House, said in recent days that she was offered $15,000 a month in hush money by Trump’s campaign after being fired in December as a senior adviser if she agreed not to disclose any information about the president, Vice President Mike Pence and their families.
In several television interviews, she asserted that she rejected that arrangement and decided to write her book instead.
She also has said she avoided signing a confidentiality agreement for her White House job. The president tweeted Tuesday morning that she had signed an NDA, though presumably he was referring to the one for the 2016 campaign.
Jack Quinn, White House counsel in the Clinton administration, said that confidentiality agreements to muzzle government officials are “absolutely unprecedented” and would be unenforceable.