President Donald Trump’s campaign filed arbitration against Omarosa Manigault-Newman in a New York City court on Tuesday, accusing the former White House aide of violating a 2016 non-disclosure agreement.
Senior Trump campaign officials told ABC News in a statement: “Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. has filed an arbitration against Manigault-Newman with the American Arbitration Association in New York City, for breach of her 2016 confidentiality agreement with the Trump Campaign. President Trump is well known for giving people opportunities to advance in their careers and lives over the decades, but wrong is wrong, and a direct violation of an agreement must be addressed and the violator must be held accountable.”
The campaign says Manigault Newman violated the agreement by both writing pejorative statements about President Trump in her new book, Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House, and releasing audio of conservations held within the John F. Kennedy Conference Room, frequently referred to as the Situation Room.
Amid a whirlwind media tour to promote Unhinged, Manigault Newman claims she heard an audio tape of President Trump uttering a racial slur while filming his hit reality television show The Apprentice. The former White House aide provided CBS News with audio tape in which two campaign staffers are heard conversing about whether the recording exists.
President Donald Trump took to Twitter this morning to push back against the allegations, referring to Manigault-Newman as a “crazed, crying lowlife.” “When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out,” the president wrote. “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”
On Monday evening, President Trump said Mark Burnett, Executive Producer of The Apprentice, called to notify him that no such tape exists of the real estate billionaire using the “N-word” on the set of the show. “Mark Burnett called 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,” he tweeted. “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have.”
The president also said Manigault-Newman lacked credibility with the media during her White House stint and is now being embraced by the press because she is disparaging him. “Omarosa had Zero credibility with the Media (they didn’t want interviews) when she worked in the White House. Now that she says bad about me, they will talk to her. Fake News!” the president wrote.
In a statement released Friday, the White House said Manigault-Newman’s book was full of falsehoods. “[T]his book is riddled with lies and false accusations,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters. “It’s sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks and, even worse, that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the president during her time in the administration.”
Manigault-Newman drew ire from across the political aisle for recording her firing conducted by Chief of Staff John Kelly in the Situation Room.
The fired Trump aide must reply to the campaign’s request for arbitration within two weeks.
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