Trump Campaign Ordered To Pay Former Aide Omarosa Manigault Newman $1.3 Million In Legal Fees
A court arbitrator delivered a financial blow to Donald Trump in the former president’s ongoing dispute with Omarosa Manigault Newman over her damaging tell-all book, Unhinged, about Trump.
The New York Times reports that the Trump presidential campaign was ordered Tuesday (April 19) to pay nearly $1.3 million in legal fees to Newman.
The arbitrator’s decision about legal fees marks the end of a three-year legal battle that began with Trump’s unsuccessful lawsuit. It claimed that Newman violated a nondisclosure agreement she signed while working for his 2016 campaign.
Although he lost the nondisclosure case in September 2021, Trump and his former The Apprentice reality show co-star continued to fight over whether his campaign should pay Newman’s legal fees.
“Respondent was defending herself in a claim which was extensively litigated for more than three years, against an opponent who undoubtedly commanded far greater resources than did respondent,” the Times quoted the arbitrator.
This case was just the latest twist in the bad blood between the ex-president and his one-time compatriot. On March 15, a federal judge ordered Newman to pay a $61,585 penalty for ignoring her duty to file a timely financial disclosure report after leaving the Trump White House in 2017.
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Trump hired Newman to serve on his 2016 presidential campaign as head of African American Outreach. After winning the election, she landed a $179,000-a-year job as a communications adviser in the White House Office of Public Liaison.
But former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her in December 2017. She secretly recorded Kelly warning that her termination could be “a friendly departure … without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation” before she was escorted out of the White House.
After she made the audio recording public, Trump called her a “lowlife” and a “dog.” Newman fired back with an insider tell-all book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House, in which she alleged that Trump is a racist who has used the N-word on the set of The Apprentice.
