Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Wednesday questioned whether the nondisclosure agreements signed by staffers in President Trump’s White House are even enforceable.
“As it relates to a nondisclosure agreement for government employees — and I’m not an attorney just to be clear — I don’t know if they’re valid whatsoever,” Lewandowski told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
“Other than the disclosing of classified information — which is a crime in and of itself, has nothing to do with a nondisclosure agreement — I don’t know how you hold a public employee, a government employee, accountable to a nondisclosure agreement,” he continued.
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The ethics and legality of requiring White House staffers to sign nondisclosure agreements has emerged as a point of contention after former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman published a new book filled with explosive claims about her time on the Trump campaign and as an aide in the Trump administration.
The White House has in recent days confirmed staffers were required to sign nondisclosure agreements, calling it “common” for government employees to do so.
Lewandowski said the agreements are likely a holdover from Trump’s time in the business world, where the documents were common for members of the Trump Organization.
“I don’t know who did sign, I don’t know who didn’t sign them,” he said. “I’ve never seen one because I didn’t work for the government in any capacity. But I don’t know if they’re enforceable.”
Lewandowski said he signed a nondisclosure agreement when he agreed in January 2015 to join the Trump campaign, which had not yet formally launched at the time.
He has since written a book, which framed his time on the campaign in a largely positive light. Lewandowski said he was never in contact with Trump’s representatives prior to publishing the book and did not receive pushback after it was published.
Manigault Newman’s book paints Trump in a far less flattering light. She alleges the president is a racist and misogynist, and claims Trump used the “N-word” repeatedly on the set of “The Apprentice.”
She has acknowledged she signed a nondisclosure agreement for her time on the Trump campaign, but has denied signing a similar document upon leaving the White House in December.
The Trump campaign filed for arbitration with Manigault Newman on Tuesday, alleging she violated a nondisclosure agreement.
Even if she did sign such a document as a government employee, Lewandowski questioned how effective it would be in blocking Manigault Newman from making critical statements.
“I don’t know how you can stop somebody from saying something they want to say about somebody,” Lewandowski said Wednesday.
“You do have the right to free speech, you do have the right to talk to people, you have the right to publish a book if you want to or say what you want or pen an article,” he continued. “I don’t know how you can stop that from happening.”