Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer says he is not being paid to avoid bad-mouthing President Trump, as his former colleague Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed Sunday.
“I hadn’t received a penny from anyone in the Trump apparatus or connected to Trump until June 15 of this year,” Spicer told C-SPAN Monday, referring to joining a Trump-aligned super PAC America First Action.
Spicer said he did not have to get approval from the White House for his book, The Briefing, about his time as Trump’s spokesman. The book, however, has not been well-received. In one review, Spicer was accused of “gaslighting” Americans with his book and that it was “littered with inaccuracies.”
[Trump: ‘Wacky Omarosa’ is ‘hated’ in the White House, will never work for me again]
When asked if other White House staffers had been “bought off,” Manigault Newman told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Spicer signed an agreement he would not be critical of the president.
“Absolutely. The campaign, the [Republican National Committee], and America First, which is why Sean Spicer was describing Donald Trump as a ‘unicorn jumping over rainbows,’” she said. “Because he signed this same agreement.”
Manigault Newman said she was offered a job with Trump’s re-election campaign after she was fired, but she would have had to sign an agreement that would have barred her from disparaging Trump.
“They were not offering me a real job. They told me I could work from home, if I even wanted to work. They didn’t really care if I showed up,” she said. “In fact, there are several former employees from the White House who actually signed this agreement, who are all being paid $15,000 for their silence.”
Spicer said he did not sign a nondisclosure agreement after he left his position at the White House, but his comments left open the possibility that he had signed one while he still worked in the West Wing.
“I did not sign a nondisclosure agreement,” he said. “What Omarosa’s charge was when I left the White House, was I took hush money and signed an NDA when I left.”
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway confirmed Sunday that White House staffers have signed confidentiality agreements.
“We have confidentiality agreements in the West Wing, absolutely we do,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And why wouldn’t we?”
“We’ve all signed them in the West Wing,” she added.
