Uh, Oh?
Omarosa is gonna win ANOTHER one against her old boss?
Will other former campaign people be getting up and speaking to the media?
Donald Trump is NOT having a good day….
A Manhattan judge issued a ruling on Thursday that thwarted the Trumpcampaign’s attempts to keep a lawsuit out of open court, with potential implications for the looming battle over fired Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s slow-motion revelations of her experiences in the Trump campaign and White House.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by Jessica Denson, a former campaign staffer who filed a complaint last November that alleged she was subjected to “harassment and sexual discrimination” while she worked on Trump’s White House bid in 2016. Lawyers for the Trump campaign tried to force the case into private arbitration based on an agreement signed by staffers that included nondisclosure and nondisparagement provisions. In her decision, Judge Arlene Bluth of New York State Supreme Court disclosed flaws in the wording of the agreement that she said limited its scope.
The ruling exposes potential weaknesses in the non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements that staff at Trump’s White House, his campaign, and the Trump Organization have been made to sign. These documents have made headlines this past week as Manigault Newman, a former White House staffer, claimed the White House was trying to use them to “silence” her after she went public with a tell-all book and a series of embarrassing tapes from her time in the West Wing and from working on Trump’s campaign….
Wait….
It could get worst for Trump….
It appears that Government NDA’s violate the US Government Whistleblower Act….
According to legal experts the non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that the Trump Administration required White House staff to sign are felony criminal violations, and put BOTH Trump Administration officials and the signers in serious legal jeopardy.
Much has been written about how the White House staff NDA’s are unprecedented and unenforceable:
Dozens of White House aides have signed NDAs in exchange for working for Trump, who has long relied on such agreements in his business career, according to current and former administration employees. But NDAs have not been widely used by past administrations outside the transition time between presidents, in part because most legal experts believe such agreements are not legally enforceable for public employees.
However, these NDAs are not just unenforceable. First, they are a clear violations of the Whistleblower Protection Act:
Simply put, it is illegal for anyone in the Trump administration to impose a nondisclosure agreement on a member of the federal government that in any way limits that person’s ability to communicate with Congress and expose waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.
And it gets worse, much, much worse. These NDAs constitute bribery of public officials:
18 U.S. Code § 201 – Bribery of public officials and witnesses
…
(c)Whoever—
(A) directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official,…for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public official…; or(B) being a public official,…directly or indirectly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such official or person;…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.