Former presidential adviser, Omarosa Manigault Newman released an audio recording that she says features President Donald Trump, as she threatened to
Former presidential adviser, Omarosa Manigault Newman released an audio recording that she says features President Donald Trump, as she threatened to “blow the whistle” on White House corruption. The recording, released on NBC’s “Today” show, is purportedly a phone conversation between Trump and Manigault Newman after she was fired from the White House. It appears to show Trump expressing surprise, saying “nobody even told me about it.”
Now Omarosa Manigault Newman is drawing fire from Trump’s allies and national security experts for secret recordings she made at the White House, including her firing by chief of staff John Kelly in the high-security Situation Room. While the recording appears to show Trump was unaware of the firing, Manigault Newman said on “Today” that Trump may have instructed Kelly to do it, but she offered no evidence.
She told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she surreptitiously recorded a number of conversations in the White House for her own protection. Parts of her conversation with Kelly were played on the air. Critics denounced the recordings as a serious breach of ethics and security. Manigault Newman, whose book “Unhinged” will be out this week, suggested there was more to come, saying: “There’s a lot of very corrupt things happening in the White House and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of them.”
In the recording, which Manigault Newman quotes extensively in her new book, “Unhinged,” Kelly can be heard saying that he wants to talk with Manigault Newman about leaving the White House.
“It’s come to my attention over the last few months that there’s been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you,” Kelly is heard saying, citing her use of government vehicles and “money issues and other things” that he compares to offenses that could lead to a court martial in the military.
“If we make this a friendly departure … 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,” he tells Manigault Newman, adding: “There are some serious legal issues that have been violated and you’re open to some legal action that we hope, we think, we can control.
Manigault Newman said she viewed the conversation as a “threat” and defended her decision to covertly record it and other White House conversations.
“If I didn’t have these recordings, no one in America would believe me,” she said.
Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said Omarosa Manigault Newman may have broken the law by recording private conversations at the White House.
“She’s certainly violating national security regulations, which I think have the force of law.”
In the book, Manigault Newman paints a damning picture of Trump, including claiming without evidence that tapes exist of him using the N-word as he filmed his “The Apprentice” reality series, on which she co-starred. Manigault Newman wrote in the book that she had not personally heard the recording. But she told Chuck Todd on Sunday that she later was able to hear a recording of Trump during a trip to Los Angeles.
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Manigault Newman had indeed been a staunch defender of the president for years, including pushing back, as the highest-profile African-American in the White House, on accusations that he was racist. But Manigault Newman now says she was “used” by Trump, calling him a con who has been masquerading as someone who is actually open to engaging with diverse communities” and is “truly a racist.
“I was complicit with this White House deceiving this nation,” she said. “I had a blind spot where it came to Donald Trump.”
