Ex-Trump aide claims offer of hush pay

WASHINGTON • Omarosa Manigault Newman was offered a $15,000-a-month contract from President Donald Trump’s campaign to stay silent after being fired from her job as a White House aide by Chief of Staff John Kelly last December, according to a forthcoming book by Manigault Newman and people familiar with the proposal.

But she refused, according to the incendiary new book, “Unhinged: An Insider Account of Trump’s White House,” which also depicts Trump as unqualified, narcissistic and racist. Excerpts of the book were obtained by The Washington Post. After she was fired, Manigault Newman wrote, she received a call from Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-inlaw, offering her a job and the monthly contract in exchange for her silence.

The proposed nondisclosure agreement allegedly said Manigault Newman could not make any comments about Trump or his family; Vice-President Mike Pence or his family; or any comments that could damage the president. It said she would do “diversity outreach,” among other things, for the campaign, according to her account.

Her book is the first insider account from a White House aide that is not largely flattering toward the president. Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking black employee in the White House, calls Trump a “racist, misogynist and bigot.”

For months while in the White House, Manigault Newman says in the book she spent time searching for a rumoured tape of Trump saying the n-word on tape as host of The Apprentice. She writes in the book without providing evidence that such a tape exists. Manigault Newman also says that other aides in the White House kept tabs on rumours of the tape.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the book “is riddled with lies and false accusations. It’s sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the president during her time in the administration.”

Manigault Newman has known Trump for more than a decade, and held the job as an “assistant to the president” after starring as a famed villain in his TV show, The Apprentice.