On Tuesday, the back and forth between former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman and the Donald Trump administration reached a fever pitch. The Trump campaign filed a demand for arbitration, asserting that she violated a non-disclosure agreement associated with her 2016 campaign work via her new book, and Omarosa dug into her position, revealing in the process why the Trump team might be just so concerned about her.
She confirmed Tuesday to journalist Katy Tur that she’s been interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team for the Russia investigation. That confirmation came after she told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that she would be willing to speak with the special counsel’s team “again” — indicating that she had already done so.
She did not offer many details of the substance of her conversation with the team Trump remains so afraid of.
She told Tur:
‘I feel like my hands are tied because, as you know, I do love to communicate about the things that are going on in my life, but unfortunately, I can’t elaborate.’
Watch below:
.@OMAROSA on Trump taking legal action to silence her: “What is he trying to hide or afraid of? If he has not said anything that’s derogatory or demeaning to African Americans, why would he go to the extent to shut me down?”
She also confirms she’s been interviewed by Mueller. pic.twitter.com/uzKbSiTa1W
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 14, 2018
She had previously indicated, as Tur noted, that she has recordings of conversations “that Robert Mueller could be interested in.” Although she’s been in the president’s orbit for years, the special counsel is no doubt most interested in what info she can provide about the president’s activities in connection to his rise to political power.
She asserts that she can definitely provide such relevant information.
Pressed by Tur, Omarosa began, speaking of Trump:
‘I think that he should come clean with the American people. I think that he should be honest about what he did during the campaign and what he continued to do in the White House.’
Tur, pointing out that in her book she claims campaign staffers to have been instructed to talk about the emails Russia stole from the Democrats as often as possible, asked Omarosa if Trump knew about the emails before they were publicly released.
Omarosa, no doubt well aware of the grave implications of what she was saying, asserted that he “absolutely” did.
Watch that moment below:
BREAKING: Omarosa tells @KatyTurNBC that Trump “absolutely” knew about the hacked emails before WIkiLeaks released them.
She says Trump knew what was coming out before they were released and that Trump campaign members were instructed to bring them up as much as possible. pic.twitter.com/h63weQCpxS
— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) August 14, 2018
That assertion cuts to the core of the Russia scandal and its driving question of what the president knew and when he knew it, to use familiar phrasing.
He’s recently faced a similar challenge along those lines via a claim from his former lawyer Michael Cohen that he knew about a meeting Donald Jr. had with a Kremlin lawyer who’d been promised to be bringing Russian government dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Trump fiercely countered that claim, writing on Twitter on August 5:
‘Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!’
Although Trump and his associates have claimed otherwise, no, collusion with a foreign power is not legal.
Omarosa questioned during her Tuesday conversation with Tur what Trump is so concerned about getting out — and well, it may be that he was “in on” collusion after all.
Featured Image via Screenshot from the Video
