Government

Trump Campaign Ordered To Cough Up $1.3M To Omarosa In Confidentiality Agreement Dispute

Good thing they can raise that much from the rubes with one deranged fundraising text.

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Omarosa

(Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Sky News)

Yesterday an arbitrator in New York awarded attorney’s fees of $1.3 million to Omarosa Manigault Newman, the onetime Apprentice contestant turned White House aide, who was sued by the campaign after writing a tell-all book about her time in Trumpland.

Manigault Newman famously recorded her termination interview with then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, as well as a conversation with Eric Trump’s wife Lara Trump, who appeared to be offering a $15,000/month campaign job as compensation for Manigault Newman’s continued silence. Instead she wrote her highly unflattering book Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House, and the Trump campaign sued in 2018 to enforce a non-disclosure agreement which supposedly barred campaign staff from disparaging the Trump family and its business for all eternity.

Unfortunately for the campaign, in March of 2021 US District Judge Paul Gardephe ruled in a separate case that an identical non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreement was unenforceable under New York law. And the arbitrator, T. Andrew Brown, President of the New York State Bar Association, agreed that the contract was essentially void for vagueness.

“[T]here is no way here to tell if a breach has occurred, since the determination of whether there is a breach is left to the sole determination of Mr. Trump,” he wrote in September 2021.

As with every Trump production, things got a little wild, as Manigault Newman’s attorney John Phillips describes on his firm’s website:

The Campaign’s lawyers, Harder LLP, hired “crisis management and media expert,” Eric Rose who had two problems in his deposition: (1) he was not aware that the sole recommendation he made on behalf of the Campaign- that Omarosa pay for over $800,000 for anti-defamation commercials to be aired before the election- violated campaign finance laws and was thus illegal, and (2) that Trump’s very own crisis management expert had a Twitter account full of disparaging comments about Trump, calling him a “pathological liar” and sharing opinions that Trump was a “moron” and criticizing Trump for wishing someone allegedly associated with sex trafficking- “well.” After this deposition, Trump’s lawyers sought to have this deposition removed from YouTube and, once again, lost that request.

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Who among us, right? And yet the campaign actually sought to deny the fee award on the ground that her attorney was mean to them.

Arbitrator Brown wasn’t buying it:

Claimant contends that counsel’s “rude, obnoxious, abusive, and condescending” behavior was so egregious that it should result in a total denial of fees. While at times Respondent’s counsel’s tone and temperament pushed the boundaries, the Arbitrator fails to find that counsel’s conduct rose to the level of bad faith or unethical conduct. Litigation is necessarily adversarial and the Arbitrator does not fault Respondent’s counsel for vigorously advocating for his client.

Nor was he about to block recovery because of some paperwork technicalities.

In deciding to permit supplemental briefing, the Arbitrator took into consideration that Respondent did not bring this case. Respondent was defending herself in a claim which was extensively litigated for more than three years, against an opponent who undoubtedly commanded far greater resources than did Respondent. Principles of equity and justice, which the Arbitrator is bound to apply in accordance with the Commercial Rules, did not comport with summarily denying the motion after the initial briefing was complete

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So Manigault Newman got at least some of what she asked for. Her attorney sought to get $3 million, which is the amount Charles “Gawker Slayer” Harder was paid to lose the case, before he noped out and handed it off to successor counsel. In the event, the arbitrator gave the fee request a rather substantial haircut. But Phillips wasn’t complaining.

“We represented Omarosa pro-bono based on a review of the NDA’s prevailing party agreement, which grants reasonable attorney fees to the victor,” he tweeted. “We hope more lawyers will take contingent Constitutional work.”

Naturally the Trump campaign says it plans to appeal the ruling from its own arbitrator. Eye roll.

Arbitration Docs [Via FloridaJustice.com]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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