To suggest that the Trump administration had been fraught with turmoil and conflict since its inception would be an understatement. Concurrent to the bickering that the president has carried on with, a number of high profile staffers have packed their bags and left D.C. In fact, the Trump administration set a record for the highest first year senior staff turnover rate.
One of those to have abruptly been revealed to be leaving is reality star turned Trump administration official Omarosa Manigault-Newman, whose official last day on the job is Saturday, even though her clearance to enter the White House complex was apparently revoked late last year.
Her departure from the White House was just the latest installment in her controversial career in the public eye, marked by reports of her having to be physically removed from the premises. Omarosa unsurprisingly denied these reports, although the Secret Service seems to lend some credence to them in the latter part of their statement, treating Omarosa’s removal from the complex as a fact.
Now, there is another development in Omarosa’s story that is ensuring she stay in the public eye.
According to sources speaking to the New York Daily News, Omarosa may have taped confidential conversations that went on in the White House using her personal phone.
As one source put it:
‘Everyone knows Omarosa loves to record people and meetings using the voice notes app on her iPhone. Don’t be surprised if she has secret audio files on everyone in that White House, past and present staffers included.’
This reported recording, according to a source speaking to the Daily News, sparked the widely reported, recently instituted ban on personal cellphones in the West Wing. That ban has been said to have been a long time coming, and comes after the Trump administration has already been reported to have taken similar even if not as all-encompassing moves in the past.
Concurrent to any possible purpose of wanting to keep recordings from being produced, the Trump administration has a well documented fixation with leaks to the media, seeking to put a stop to them but often seeming unable to.
As for why Omarosa made the recordings, according to the Daily News, she feared being swept up in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the president’s team. Omarosa had been with the Trump team since the campaign days, but an administration insider mocked the idea that she could have access to any information relevant to Mueller’s investigation.
Even still, Trump administration officials asserted that the Russia investigation wouldn’t last into 2018, so an official’s reported dismissal of Omarosa’s significance should be taken with a grain of salt.
Among the most recent developments in the concurrent Russia investigations unfolding is controversy over former Trump insider Steve Bannon’s refusal to answer questions posed to him by the House Intelligence Committee. He showed up to the interview, but he then — at least in part through his lawyer — informed the committee that he wouldn’t be discussing a wide range of matters, a refusal he stuck by even in the face of a promptly issued subpoena.
Ironically, Bannon and the White House experienced a very public falling out at the beginning of this year prompted by the publication of incendiary comments from the former Trump staffer, but that hasn’t stopped him from being on their side, apparently.
Ironically, Trump has wielded the threat of tapes over his opponents in the past only to be proven to be bluffing, so it would really be something if Omarosa’s tapes were to ever end up working against him.
Featured Image via Cheriss May/ NurPhoto via Getty Images
