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.

“Believe me,” Ms. Manigault Newman said on MSNBC, invoking one of Mr. Trump’s favorite phrases to convey his sincerity, “my tapes are much better than theirs.”

Ms. Manigault Newman is not the only person who has caused Mr. Trump harm with his own tactics.

Another is Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, who told allies he did not want to be made the scapegoat for Mr. Trump’s legal troubles. Mr. Cohen secretly recorded a conversation in which he and Mr. Trump discussed payments from The National Enquirer’s parent company to a Playboy model who had claimed she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s campaign said it had no knowledge of the payments, but the recording was made before those denials.

Michael Avenatti — who represents Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress who also said she had an affair with Mr. Trump and was paid hush money by Mr. Cohen — has also used the president’s own tactics to rattle him.

Mr. Avenatti has waited for Mr. Trump to make denials and has then dribbled out contradictory information. He has been omnipresent on cable news, just as Mr. Trump was in 2016.

On Thursday, officials at Simon & Schuster, the publisher of “Unhinged,” said they had received a legal warning letter against publication from Charles Harder, the libel lawyer whom Mr. Trump has retained in other matters. The publisher’s lawyer responded in kind, saying the president was using the highest platform in the land to censor someone.

Some major donors to Mr. Trump were bothered by the revelations that the campaign may have been used as a slush fund to pay fired or troublesome employees, said Dan K. Eberhart, an Arizona donor and energy executive who serves as an adviser to the America First Policies group created to support Mr. Trump’s agenda.

“It’s diverting donor money that could be used to wage the midterm election battle or store resources for Trump’s re-election,” Mr. Eberhart said. “Instead, it’s an elongated hush payment.”

He added, though, that he did not believe it would dissuade donors. “They still want to win elections,” he said.