Omarosa Manigault Newman Releases Tape of Lara Trump’s $15,000-a-Month Job Offer - New York Times

Omarosa Manigault Newman Releases Tape of Lara Trump’s $15,000-a-Month Job Offer

By releasing tapes of her private conversations, Omarosa Manigault Newman has taken a page from President Trump’s playbook.CreditShannon Stapleton/Reuters
By Maggie Haberman and Kenneth P. Vogel
Aug. 16, 2018

Omarosa Manigault Newman released a secret recording on Thursday that she said backed her claim that President Trump’s daughter-in-law had offered her a $15,000-a-month contract in exchange for her silence about her time as a White House adviser.

The audio, released during an interview on MSNBC, is the latest in the trickle of recordings that Ms. Manigault Newman has made public to bolster the credibility — and sales — of her tell-some book, “Unhinged,” about her tenure at the White House.

In the book, she claimed that the Trump 2020 campaign, which is partly overseen by Lara Trump, who is married to Mr. Trump’s son Eric, offered her a salary equal to what she had earned before being fired from the White House in December.

Ms. Trump noted on the tape, which Ms. Manigault Newman said was recorded days after she was fired, that the money would come from campaign donors.

“All the money that we raise and that pays salaries is directly from donors, small-dollar donors for the most part,” Ms. Trump said. “So I know you, you were making 179 at the White House, and I think we can work something out where we keep you right along those lines.”

In a statement, Ms. Trump said that she had shared a bond with Ms. Manigault Newman during the 2016 campaign “as a friend and a campaign sister, and I am absolutely shocked and saddened by her betrayal and violation on a deeply personal level.”

“I hope it’s all worth it for you, Omarosa, because some things you just can’t put a price on,” she continued.

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.

Her willingness to slowly deploy the tapes for maximum effect is straight from Mr. Trump’s playbook, which includes boasts of relying on “truthful hyperbole” to engage people, of threatening to expose people with recordings and of claiming to have scurrilous information about people that he might reveal at any moment.