Ex-President ’s presidential campaign has been ordered to pay close to $1.3million in legal fees to former Apprentice star Omarosa Manigault Newman, who wrote a tell-all book bashing him.
A court arbitrator ordered the Trump campaign to pay Manigault Newman, a former White House aide, on Tuesday, reported.
It comes after Trump sued Manigault Newman over her book Unhinged, but claimed unsuccessfully that she violated a nondisclosure agreement she signed while working on his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump lost the arbitration case in September.
‘Respondent was defending herself in a claim which was extensively litigated for more than three years, against an opponent who undoubtedly commanded far greater resources than did respondent,’ the arbitrator wrote.
Manigault Newman’s lawyer John Phillips called the ordered award the ‘largest known attorney fee award against a Political Campaign or President we can find’.
It ‘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’, Phillips stated.
Trump and Manigault Newman met during the first season of his reality TV show, The Apprentice, in 2004. More than a decade later, she rallied the black vote for Trump, and when he was elected president, she was given a role in the White House.
In December 2017, Trump’s then-White House chief of staff John Kelly fired Manigault Newman.
Manigault Newman published her book in August 2018, describing chaos in the White House. In addition, she released audio recordings of her talks around Trump. The White House at the time branded Manigault Newman’s book as ‘riddled with lies’.
Trump’s lawsuit against Manigault Newman ran more than three years.
The former president’s team has not commented publicly on the order to pay Manigault Newman.
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