Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Omarosa Manigault (R) attend a church service, in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., September 3 2016.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
An arbitrator ordered Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to pay $1.3 million in legal fees to Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former “Apprentice” star whom the campaign unsuccessfully sued over a book about her tenure as a White House advisor, her lawyer said Wednesday.
The award comes nearly seven months after the arbitrator ruled in Manigault Newman’s favor that a confidentiality agreement she signed while working on Trump’s 2016 campaign was invalid under New York law.
The campaign in 2018 had filed a complaint with the American Arbitration Association in New York against her claiming that she violated that non-disclosure agreement with a scathing tell-all book titled “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.”
Manigault Newman’s lawyer John Phillips, in a statement, said the decision was the “largest known attorney fee award against a Political Campaign or President we can find and hopefully will send a message that weaponized litigation will not be tolerated and empower other lawyers to stand up and fight for the whistleblower and vocal critic against the oppressive machine.”
“However, the $1.3 Million pales in comparison to the $3 to $4 million the Trump Campaign paid its own lawyers in order to suppress speech,” Phillips said.
“That’s a lot of donations which went to lawyers in the name of politics. It’s truly shameful. We look forward to receiving a check and will donate a portion of the proceeds to groups who stand up to the suppression of speech.”
A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Manigault Newman first gained notoriety for her role as a villain-esque contestant on the first season of Trump’s former reality television show “The Apprentice.”
In her book, she detailed her brief stint as a White House advisor before she was fired by Trump’s then-White House chief of staff John Kelly in December 2017.
In 2018, she revealed she had secretly recorded high-ranking Trump administration officials, including Kelly. In her book, she accused Trump of using racist language, alleging that tapes exist of him using racial slurs.
The Trump White House at the time said her book was “riddled with lies.”