Five startling claims from Omarosa
Omarosa Manigault Newman’s scorched-earth campaign to promote a new book and take down the White House has led to a full-out war with President Trump, who on Tuesday referred to his former ally as a “dog.”
Manigault Newman for more than a week has made headlines with a series of startling accusations made in the book “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.”
She’s also released a series of audio tapes that have included conversations with the president and White House chief of staff John Kelly.
{mosads}The Trump campaign responded on Tuesday by filing an arbitration complaint with Manigault Newman that accused her of violating a nondisclosure agreement.
Here are Manigault Newman’s five most startling allegations so far.
There’s a tape of Trump using the N-word
Manigault Newman claims that she confirmed the existence of a tape that shows Trump used the racial slur during his time on “The Apprentice,” where he first met his one-time protégé.
She claims she heard the tape herself after finishing her book.
“I had heard for two years it existed, and once I heard it for myself, it was confirmed what I feared the most: that Donald Trump is a con and has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities. But when he talks that way, the way he did on this tape, it confirmed that he is truly a racist,” Manigault Newman said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.”
Several of the staffers Manigault Newman claims told her about the tape or played it for her have denied it happened.
Trump added a denial of his own on Monday, tweeting that Mark Burnett, the creator of “The Apprentice,” had called him “to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up.”
The Trump campaign offered her money to be quiet
Manigault Newman alleges that Trump’s campaign offered her a job paying $15,000 per month in return for her silence after leaving the White House.
She claims that “they didn’t really care if I showed up” for the job and just wanted her to sign a confidentiality agreement.
“During the term of your service, and at all times thereafter, you hereby promise and agree not to demean or disparage publicly, in any form or through any medium, the Campaign, Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence, any Trump or Pence Company, any Trump or Pence Family Member, or any Trump or Pence Family Member Company,” read the contract, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
Manigault Newman alleged Sunday that there are “several former employees from the White House who actually signed this agreement, who are all being paid $15,000 for their silence.”
On Tuesday, the Trump campaign filed arbitration action against her, alleging she breached the confidentiality agreement. Manigault Newman on MSNBC’s “Hardball” denied that she’d signed such an agreement.
Trump has “mentally declined”
Manigault Newman took a swing at the president’s mental competence, writing that in 2017 she saw evidence that “his mental decline could not be denied.”
“They continue to deceive this nation by how mentally declined he is, how difficult it is for him to process complex information,” she said, referring to White House staff, during her “Meet the Press” appearance on Sunday.
She also told NBC’s “Today” that Trump sometimes “battles with reality.”
In the book, she blamed Trump’s “terrible health habits,” especially drinking eight cans of Diet Coke a day, for making him “physically ill” as well as impacting his mental health.
The White House in January released the results of a physical exam that found Trump is in “excellent health.”
John Kelly issued a ‘threat’ when he fired her
Manigault Newman has released a tape of her firing by White House chief of staff John Kelly that was recorded in the White House Situation Room.
She says that Kelly brought her into the room, locked the door and fired her.
In the conversation, Kelly appears to threaten Manigault Newman by saying it would be good to have a “friendly departure.”
“It’s come to my attention over the last few months that there’s been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues,” Kelly says in the recording. “I think it’s important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure we can all be, you know — you can look at your time here in the White House as a year of service to the nation. And then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation.”
Manigault Newman said Sunday she took the comment about her reputation as a “threat” and called for the White House to release her personnel file to reveal what Kelly was referring to when citing “integrity issues.”
She also alleged that Kelly fired her without Trump’s input. To back up her claim, Manigault Newman released a subsequent tape on Monday of a conversation between her and Trump the day after she was fired where he said “nobody even told me about” her firing.
Manigault Newman claimed on “Meet the Press” that Trump later admitted he “delegated” her firing.
She’s talked to Mueller and is willing to talk to him again
Manigault Newman said Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller has already reached out to her as part of his ongoing investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“If his office calls again, anything they want, I’ll share,” she said Monday on “Hardball.”
She went further, saying she’d be willing to be a witness in his case.
Mueller has shown interest in tapes of Trump in the past. Federal agents seized multiple tapes recorded by Trump’s one-time personal attorney Michael Cohen while executing a search warrant. One such tape includes a recording of Trump and Cohen allegedly discussing hush-money payments over the story of a Playboy model who claims to have had an affair with Trump.
Manigault Newman told “Meet the Press” that she has “a treasure trove of documentation” for the claims she made in the book.
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