Working in the Donald Trump White House could lead to financial destruction. Being chosen as an intern should be an exciting proposition. It is a public service leadership program that provides students an opportunity of a lifetime. They gain professional experience and learn how to become leaders. It is a mentoring program to prepare them for public service opportunities. Yet, is the price for the Trump White House opportunity too high?
No White House wants its interns leaking. Yet, this may have been the White House with the greatest number of leaks in history. Even Donald Trump leaks to the press.
Yet under this administration, another representative from the White House counsel’s office shows up and demands that the interns must sign a non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Everyone working in this administration has been required to do so.
The person from the counsel’s office warned the interns that if they broke the agreement, according to The Daily Beast:
‘…blabbing to the media, for instance—could result in legal, and thus financial, consequences for them. Interns were also told that they would not receive their own copies.’
Former spokesman for the Obama National Security Council Ned Price said:
‘All White House employees—from senior officials to interns—understand the necessity of discretion based on the fact that they hold positions of public trust, with an emphasis on public. But this White House’s approach to non-disclosure agreements, even for interns, seems to suggest that guarding against criticism of the president and his family—what most of us would consider to be protected speech—is just as important as safeguarding the sensitive information the American public entrusts to the government.’
During the presidential election, Trump admitted that he planned to force “employees of the federal government” to also sign NDAs:
‘I don’t know, there could be some kind of a law that you can’t do this. But when people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I don’t like that.’
Legal director at the Government Accountability Project in Washington D.C., Tom Devine said:
‘Gagging interns is playing with legal fire. There is no White House exemption in the longstanding appropriations rider that employees who try to obstruct communications with Congress are subject to salary cutoff. Nor is the White House exempt from criminal liability since 1980 for obstructing witnesses in any federal investigation.’
These NDAs should be legally unenforceable and simply an unpleasant attempt to intimidate people. A number of individuals in this turnstile White House have written tell-all books after they either left or were fired.
Michael Wolff was not employed by the administration. He said that he just hung around in the chaotic environment talking to people and gaining information for his book Fire & Fury. One of those people was Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. The commander-in-chief was not happy.
The president’s attorney Charles Harder was responsible for killing a publication, Gawker. Harder sent Bannon a letter that threatened him with a lawsuit. Then, nothing happened.
Former Apprentice star and senior Trump official, Omarosa Manigault Newman published a tell-all book UNHINGED. Harder also sent her publisher Simon & Schuster a threatening letter:
‘…should you proceed with publishing and selling the Book. Such claims would include, among others, tortious interference with the Agreement, and inducement of Ms. Manigault-Newman to breach the Agreement.’
But Newman ended up paying $50,000 to Trump for damages.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
