Donald Trump’s negative attitude toward strong women has become more obvious than ever. First, he beats up on one of the first two women elected to Congress, Rashid Tlaib (D-MI) with his discriminatory tweets. Now, it appears he is facing another lawsuit filed by a woman who knows him well.
Former Apprentice star Omarosa Manigault-Newman earned her way into the White House the same way as many of his staff by campaigning on the 2020 presidential election. Trump first made her his 2016 campaign director of African-American outreach. She later worked as the communications director for the White House Office of Public Liaison.
Yet, it appears that POTUS discriminated against her and other women by not paying them as well as the men in his administration. According to court documents, this former staffer allegedly joined in a declaration predating a proposed collective-action lawsuit. The complaint was that he did not pay women equally to their male counterparts.
Manigault-Newman released a statement that said, according to The Daily Beast:
‘While I strongly suspected I was subjected to pay discrimination while with the Trump campaign, I have since seen expert analysis confirming this to be true. The numbers don’t lie.’
Trump fired her in December 2017. Manigault-Newman said she never saw “such egregious violations” in this White House in her nearly two decades “inside the beltway:”
‘After nearly 20 years inside the beltway, working for two White Houses and countless political campaigns, I’ve never witnessed such egregious violations as I did during my time under the leadership of Donald Trump and Mike Pence. I am joining this effort for women and minorities to help level the playing field in the political arena between men and women. It is time for all of us to blow the whistle on the wrongdoings of this campaign.’
Another female campaign staffer Alva Johnson put the lawsuit in action. Johnson, who is also black, filed the federal lawsuit against the commander-in-chief in February. The suit claimed that Trump paid her less than the men performing her same job. In addition, she alleged that he kissed her forcibly while they were at a Florida rally in August 2016.
Manigault-Newman’s declaration points to Trump’s former deputy communications director and Trump transition team communications director Bryan Lanza. She described him as a person:
‘(W)hose work required substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility as mine (but) was paid more than me.’
Johnson’s attorney Hassan Zavareei said:
‘This case is about two things: Donald Trump’s predation, and his campaign’s discrimination against women and people of color. Our filing today advances our claim for sex discrimination by seeking collective action certification on behalf of female campaign staffers. If our motion is granted, we will be able to provide notice to other female employees to invite them to join the lawsuit.’
Zavareei told the Daily Beast this about his client earlier:
‘She feels partly responsible for helping put a sexual predator into the White House, and she believes she has an obligation to tell her story and to hold him accountable for what he’s done to her but to so many other women.’
The president’s attorneys made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit last week. They repeatedly called Johnson’s suit:
‘(S)candalous, immaterial, impertinent and prejudicial.’
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said previously:
‘(The kiss) never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eyewitness accounts.’
