“While the Justice Department has sought to pause or drop a number of high-profile court battles due to the change in administration, government lawyers are pressing on aggressively with a lawsuit claiming that Omarosa Manigault Newman failed to file a required financial disclosure following her attention-grabbing firing in December 2017,” Politico reports.
Trump Attacks Omarosa Again
President Trump renewed his attacks on former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, calling her “disgusting and foul mouthed” and accusing her of going “for some cheap money” in publishing a book last year about her time in the Trump administration, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “I am currently suing various people for violating their confidentiality agreements. Disgusting and foul mouthed Omarosa is one. I gave her every break, despite the fact that she was despised by everyone, and she went for some cheap money from a book. Numerous others also!”
Omarosa Says Other Staffers Have Tapes Too
Omarosa Manigault Newman told MSNBC that she’s not the only White House staffer that was recording conversations.
Said Manigault Newman: “I know that for a fact, yes.”
She added: “I don’t want to expose the person, but I had an exchange with a reporter last year. And we had a – a tape of that exchange. It was in the press secretary’s office. And someone, another staffer had recorded it for me, I didn’t know that they did, just to push back on that reporter who lied and said certain things happened and didn’t. But there was another staffer who actually recorded that exchange, not me.”
White House Changed Phone Policy After Omarosa Tapes
CNN: “Going forward, staffers would not be allowed to leave their phones — even the government-issued ones — in lockers in the small entry area outside the Situation Room, as they had done for the previous 19 months of the administration. Instead, staffers were directed to go back and put their White House-issued devices in their offices or alongside their personal phones in lockers stationed near the West Wing entrances before being buzzed into the Situation Room.”
“This change was made quietly, but two senior administration officials told CNN they believed it was in direct response to the news that Manigualt Newman had taped Kelly.”
Omarosa Plays Tape of Trump Obsessing About Hillary
Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman played an audio recording on The View of President Trump in a private meeting talking about Hillary Clinton’s ties to Russia, The Hill reports.
Said Manigault Newman: “When Donald Trump got bored, which was very often because his attention span was very short, he would sometimes try to figure out what meetings were taking place in the White House and he would crash those meetings. This was a meeting with the entire communications staff and the press shop. We were meeting to talk about tax reform or his trip to North Korea.”
She added: “He came into the meeting, he sat down, and he starts rambling from topic to topic, none of it makes sense. And this is in October of last year, so this is … twelve months after the election, and he’s still talking about Hillary Clinton.”
How Omarosa Secretly Taped Her Conversations
“Omarosa taped nearly every conversation she had while working in the White House, including ones with ‘all of the Trumps,’ a source who watched her make many of the tapes tells Axios. Omarosa did this with a personal phone, almost always on record mode.”
The details: “She carried two phones, her personal phone and her government-issued one. She would often put conversations she had on her work phone on speaker, then record those with her personal phone. Before heading into meetings, she would often press ‘record’ on her personal phone — which she carried in her pocket or in a small purse.”
Trump Pushes Omarosa’s Book to Number 1
Unhinged, the tell-all memoir by Omarosa Manigault Newman topped the New York Times best seller list this week, spurred on by attacks by President Trump on his former White House aide, CNN reports.
Washington Post: “Manigault Newman should thank Donald Trump for her success. Even before the book was officially released on Aug. 14, the president started firing off angry tweets, gassing up public interest far beyond anything the publisher or the author could have managed by themselves.”
Omarosa Will Release a Video Tonight
Chris Matthews says that Omarosa Manigault Newman will release a video tape tonight on Hardball.
Where’s Omarosa?
First Read: “By the way, notice who hasn’t been in the news lately — Omarosa. We’ve gotta guess that the Brennan-security-clearance story really did change the subject.”
Omarosa Has Video Too
“It’s not just audiotapes. Omarosa Manigault Newman has a stash of video, emails, text messages and other documentation supporting the claims in her tell-all book about her time in the Trump White House,” the AP reports.
“Manigault Newman has made clear that she plans to continue selectively releasing the pieces of evidence if President Trump and his associates continue to attack her credibility and challenge the claims in her book, Unhinged. She’s already dribbled out audio recordings of conversations, and video clips, texts or email could follow.”
A source who asked for anonymity called it a multimedia “treasure trove.”
White House In Panic Over Omarosa’s ‘200 Tapes’
New York Times: “The tapes of Ms. Manigault Newman’s private conversations with Mr. Trump and other officials connected to him have rattled the White House in a way that few things other than the special counsel investigation into possible campaign collusion with Russia have. Mr. Trump’s aides have been concerned that they will make appearances on other tapes, of which Ms. Manigault Newman is believed to have as many as 200.”
Omarosa Releases Tape Discussing ‘Hush Money’
MSNBC aired audio of a conversation between Omarosa Manigault Newman and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, where they discussed a $15,000-a-month salary to work for the campaign as long as she didn’t say anything negative about President Trump.
The offer was made just days after she was fired from her White House job.
Omarosa reiterated in her interview that she had witnessed “corruption” during her time in the White House, but when asked for the specifics of what she saw, she replied that “there are things I’m going to save to share when the time is right.”
Meanwhile, Vanity Fair reports that Trump told advisers that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to have Omarosa arrested.
Hatch Doesn’t Like Trump Calling Omarosa a ‘Dog’
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told CNN that he’s “not comfortable” with President Trump calling Omarosa Manigault Newman “a dog.”
Said Hatch: “I have a lot of regard for the president, I understand how snotty some of this stuff is that they do to him, but even then I think he has to rise above that.”
The Only Way to Shut Down Trump
Omarosa Manigault Newman told the Daily Show that the only way to combat President Trump is not to give him the attention.
Said Manigault Newman: “There’s one way to shut Donald Trump down and that is to just don’t give him the oxygen. And the oxygen comes from the clicks, the likes, the shock, the discussions.”
The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend?
Former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen tweets:
To the many dozens of journalists who called me, questioning Omarosa’s claim in her new book that Donald Trump took a note from me, put it in his mouth and ate it… I saw NO such thing and am shocked anyone would take this seriously.
President Trump retweeted Cohen even though his former “fixer” has now apparently turned on him.
Trump Campaign Takes Legal Steps Against Omarosa
President Trump’s campaign “said it has filed for arbitration, accusing Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former campaign aide and White House official, of breaching a 2016 nondisclosure agreement with the campaign,” CNN reports.
“The move is the first legal action the Trump campaign has taken since Manigault Newman published a tell-all book about her time as a Trump campaign adviser and senior White House official.”
Omarosa Is In Trump’s Head
Playbook: “This is the second time President Trump has been entangled with a woman who is equally adept at playing the media. First it was Stormy Daniels. Now it seems like Omarosa has gotten in Trump’s head.”
“Omarosa is someone who has known the president for years, and she has gone rogue. She’s publicly said she has betrayed Trump and the White House in the worst way — by surreptitiously recording what seems to be hours of private conversations that she might or might not release depending how events unfold. Oh, and by the way, she said on “Hardball” last night that she’d be glad to pass the tapes over to Robert Mueller should he ask.”
“She is making it clear that she is in control — not Trump and the White House. Buying her silence didn’t work. John Kelly’s suggestion she go quietly obviously fell flat. The president’s brand is savvy and strength, and Omarosa is putting him back on his heels. In that, Trump risks looking weak.”
Omarosa Claims She Has Tapes of Jared and Ivanka
Omarosa Manigault Newman “has told friends and associates that she has tapes of private phone calls from first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner,” Politico reports.
“She claims her stash of recordings — which she is dribbling out to keep the publicity machine going around the release of her new book Unhinged — includes a condolence call she received from the couple the day after she was fired by chief of staff John Kelly last December.”