Trump loses disclosure case with ex-aide
Former President Donald Trump has lost an effort to enforce a nondisclosure agreement against Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House aide and a star on “The Apprentice” who wrote a tell-all book about serving in his administration.
The decision in the case, which Trump’s campaign filed in August 2018 with the American Arbitration Association in New York, comes as the former president is enmeshed in a number of investigations and legal cases related to his private company.
“Donald has used this type of vexatious litigation to intimidate, harass and bully for years,” Manigault Newman said in a statement. “Finally the bully has met his match!”
The decision, dated Friday and handed down Monday, calls for her to collect legal fees from the Trump campaign.
Trump’s campaign filed the case shortly after Manigault Newman published her book, “Unhinged.” It claimed that she violated a nondisclosure agreement she had signed during the 2016 campaign stipulating that she would not reveal private or confidential information about his family, business or personal life.
The book paints a picture of an out-of-control president who is in a state of mental decline and is prone to racist and misogynistic behavior. Manigault Newman’s book also casts the former president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a negative light. When Trump advisers tried to cast doubt on Manigault Newman’s accounts, she released audio recordings that backed up several of her claims.
In a statement Tuesday, Trump said nothing about the arbitration case, and instead attacked Manigault Newman in personal terms.
Trump has for years used nondisclosure agreements to prevent staff members from speaking about him publicly, and to deter them from making disparaging comments or writing books like Manigault Newman’s.
The arbitration is confidential, meaning that only the parties involved can release information about the case. In papers made available by Manigault Newman’s lawyer, John Phillips, the arbitrator, Andrew Brown, said the definition of the type of comment protected by the nondisclosure agreement was so vague that it had been rendered meaningless. Further, he wrote, the statements Manigault Newman made hardly included privileged information.
“The statements do not disclose hard data such as internal polling results or donor financial information,” Brown wrote. “Rather, they are for the most part simply expressions of unflattering opinions, which are deemed ‘confidential information’ based solely upon the designation of Trump. This is exactly the kind of indefiniteness which New York courts do not allow to form the terms of a binding contract.”
At another point, Brown wrote that the agreement “effectively imposes on Respondent an obligation to never say anything remotely critical of Mr. Trump, his family or his or his family members’ businesses for the rest of her life.”
The arbitrator added, “Such a burden is certainly unreasonable.”
Phillips said the lawsuit had been an abuse of power by a sitting president. “It’s over,” he said. “We’ve won in Donald Trump and the Trump campaign’s chosen forum.”
The decision cannot be appealed, other than on the basis of fraud alleged against the arbitrator who heard the case. That leaves Trump with little recourse for continuing to pursue an action against his former aide.