Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former White House official currently promoting a tell-all book about her time in the administration, claims she was likely fired from the White House because chief of staff John Kelly knew she was close to obtaining an alleged audio recording of President Trump using the N-word.
Manigault Newman said in her book “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House” that Kelly gave her the news that she was being fired last December in the White House situation room.
She said Kelly only cited “significant integrity issues” as the reason for her firing, but wrote that she believed it traced back to her attempts to find the recording of Trump using the racial slur.
Manigault Newman recounted hearing a rumor about the tape during the 2016 campaign but when it never “came out,” she assumed “someone stopped it from happening.”
Still, she said she was “determined to get to the bottom of it,” though she had initially doubted it existed.
“The very existence of it fell squarely in my portfolio since it centered on race relations,” she wrote, referring to her official White House title as “director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison,” which reportedly included outreach to minorities.
[Trump: ‘Wacky Omarosa’ is ‘hated’ in the White House, will never work for me again]
Manigualt Newman said one unnamed source confirmed that the tape existed, and was recorded in Trump’s days as star of NBC’s “The Apprentice.” She said other anonymous sources described it to her. It allegedly featured Trump used the slur “multiple times,” according to Manigault Newman’s unnamed sources.
“What I suspect happened: [White House Communications Director and Trump ally] Hope Hicks had told John Kelly that I was this close to getting my hands on the tape,” wrote Manigault Newman. “… Kelly had been dying to get rid of me since his first day. Now he had cause. I wasn’t sure how he’d justify it, but I was sure it all led back to that tape.”
The White House did not return a Washington Examiner request for comment on Monday.
Manigault Newman said in the White House Situation Room, Kelly left her with White House lawyers, who explained that her termination was because she had abused the official White House car service, which is only for official business.
The lawyers, according to Manigault Newman, said they knew she had taken a car to a Washington Nationals baseball game and that she wrongfully allowed her husband to use the service with her.
She disputed the charge, saying she had only once taken the car service to Nationals Park and that it was on June 15 for the annual Congressional Baseball Game, which she considered to be related to official business. She also said she knew the rules to say that spouses were permitted to accompany White House officials when they were using the service.
“It just didn’t make sense,” wrote Manigault Newman. “I’d never received a warning or notification. During my entire tenure in the Trump White House, I’d never heard of anyone taken to task over car-service trips, and certainly not in the situation room with the chief of staff!”
The White House have cast the book as a work of fiction and Manigault Newman as merely an embittered former staffer looking to profit.
