Without specifying details, Harder said that excerpts of the book “contain confidential information and disparaging statements” and that the Trump campaign’s potential claims against the publisher include tortious interference and inducement of Managault Newman to breach her NDA with the campaign.
.. McNamara noted that many of the book’s early excerpts referenced episodes from Manigault Newman’s time in the White House rather than on the campaign.
.. Harder, she added, did not identify any particular excerpts as false, and the Trump campaign “does not have a viable legal claim merely because unspecified truthful statements in the Book may embarrass the President or his associates.”
And in a line that echoes Manigault Newman’s own defense of the book, McNamara said that the book was primarily aimed at educating readers about the leader of the country.
“Put simply, the book’s purpose is to inform the public,” she said. “Private contracts like the NDA may not be used to censor former or current government officials from speaking about non-classified information learned during the course of their public employment.”
The Constitution won’t let Trump silence White House aides
No matter how much the president loves them, the government can only enforce nondisclosure agreements for classified information.
Part of the outrage on the president’s part seems to be over Manigault Newman breaking what Trump saw as a promise not to talk about her time working for him. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told ABC News: “We have confidentiality agreements in the West Wing — absolutely we do.” And Manigault Newman claims in her book that Trump’s reelection campaign offered her a $15,000-a-month salary in exchange for signing a confidentiality agreement... I have reviewed one document that is purportedly a version of the White House NDA. It appeared to be nothing more than a Trump Organization document that was modified to apply to White House staff — in fact, it still had a provision that in any litigated dispute, the parties agreed that New York state law would apply, language that no standard federal document would ever have used... It was also publicly reported that one early draft of a White House NDA contained a provision that imposed a $10 million fine to be paid to the federal government if the signatory shared confidential information... While the term “confidential” in D.C. parlance is part of the national security classification framework, in these NDAs, it referred to potentially derogatory and unclassified information pertaining to the president... These NDAs also ignored earlier guidance from the Office of Management and Budget that any NDAs should contain whistleblower protection provisions, clauses that would be contrary to the clear message desired by this administration... his campaign entity, Donald J. Trump for President Inc., rather than the U.S. government, has reportedly filed for arbitration against Manigault Newman seeking millions for a violation of a 2016 NDA... The NDA allegedly required her to keep proprietary information about the president, his companies or his family confidential and to never “disparage” the Trump family “during the term of your service and at all times thereafter.” This clause is in direct conflict with the legal precedents governing federal employees, but how an arbitration body will interpret constitutional questions is anyone’s guess... In an April 2016 interview with The Washington Post, the future president said he supported making federal employees sign NDAs.“I think they should,” Trump said. “. . . When people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels, and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I don’t like that.”.. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy said the “very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”
I Watched “The Apprentice” So You Don’t Have To
A true story of my six-day binge-watching journey into the reality TV world of Donald Trump
Meanwhile, Omarosa, who is on the same damn team as Heidi, gets hit by a tiny piece of wood or plaster at the construction site (and I’m talking tiny, folks) and spends the entire episode complaining that she has a concussion. She shrugs it off at first, then progressively makes the situation worse and worse by refusing to participate in construction work and other tasks because she has a massive “headache.” It’s later revealed by Trump that Omarosa goes to the hospital and they find nothing wrong with her, although she insists on having a concussion and using it as an excuse to basically do nothing in the subsequent episodes.
.. A highlight from this bleak time period is during episode 13 (“The Price is Height”) when someone tries to bring notes into the boardroom to prove their case to Trump, to which Trump replies: “I don’t like notes.”
.. Kwame, on the other hand, is doing really fucking well until he decides to put Omarosa in charge of making sure Jessica Simpson gets from the airport to the hotel. And guess what she does.
She loses Jessica Simpson.
Omarosa — who faked a concussion and cried in the boardroom in front of Donald Trump — lost an entire human being, effectively putting Kwame’s chances of winning at an all time low.
.. it turns out that this “big reveal” was part of the season finale live show. The whole series was filmed months in advance (as per reality TV protocol), but the final deliberation was reenacted live the night of the episode’s airing.
Trump and Omarosa Are Kindred Spirits
My conversations with him about her star power.
Donald Trump and I used to talk a lot about Omarosa Manigault Newman. The future president was fascinated by her. He was fascinated by her self-absorption and nastiness, fascinated by her fleeting star power and fascinated by the fact that she was publicly recognizable by her first name alone, sort of like Prince or Madonna.
.. Viewers gravitated toward Omarosa because, on a show that exploited a “Lord of the Flies” scenario to see how badly an average group of men and women wanted to please Trump, she could behave so horrifically that it reassured folks that they probably wouldn’t be — couldn’t be — that monstrous themselves... The producers of “The Apprentice” originally thought that the show’s dog-eat-dog world would be its main attraction and that Trump’s now famous boardroom firings would just be icing on the cake. They soon discovered that Trump decapitating people with his signature phrase — “You’re fired!” — and most of the other scenes he inhabited were what gave this ensemble act its real juice.in the show’s first season in 2004 Omarosa owned her own peculiar space. Viewers loved hating her.“I’m going to crush my competition and I’m going to enjoy doing it,” she declared on the show... she dispensed with decorum and bluntly told people off. She often belittled her own teammates when strategy was debated.If she decided she wasn’t up for a particular challenge she found a way to dodge it... She was scheming, deceitful, ruthless and unapologetic, and Trump was mesmerized... Trump told me that he initially had been worried that some of “The Apprentice” contestants lacked star power. Omarosa changed his mind.“I didn’t think she had it. But she was great casting,” he told me. “We didn’t know she was the Wicked Witch until the audience found she was the Wicked Witch. We had an idea but you never know how it is going to be picked up.”.. Worried about what would become of him if and when NBC canceled “The Apprentice,” he sought advice about how best to secure his stardom. He told me he rang up Lorne Michaels, the producer of “Saturday Night Live,” for counseling... “Which is bigger, a television star or a movie star?” he asked.“A television star,” Michaels replied. “Because you are on in front of 30 million people, every week, virtually every week.”
All of this gave Trump a newfound appreciation of Omarosa.
“I would have never thought that Omarosa was a star,” he told me. “I didn’t think she was that attractive. I didn’t think she was anything. And she became a star.”
.. When Omarosa bungled her final task (shopping some art) toward the end of the first season, Trump canned her. His own star was shining brightly and he didn’t need Omarosa’s added glare.
.. By most accounts, she treated her White House stay the same way she handled “The Apprentice” competition — full speed ahead, detractors be damned.
.. Trump tweets relentlessly when he feels cornered or obsessed, and he is currently obsessed with Omarosa. She is just as craven and self-absorbed as he is, and betrayal by a kindred spirit has never sat well with him.
.. Trump’s response is also evidence that the man elected in part because of the managerial and business prowess he demonstrated on “The Apprentice” can’t get his country’s priorities in order. Expect him to wallow in moments like this for years to come.