The Omarosa recordings - What's Your Point"
HOUSTON (FOX 26) - The What's Your Point panel discusses Omarosa Manigault Newman's book and released secret recordings. What's Your Point? panelists this week include: Jessica Colon - Republican strategist, Tomaro Bell - Super neighborhood leader, Bob Price - Associate Editor of Breitbart Texas, Laura Moser - former Democratic congressional candidate, Steve Toth - former state representative (R) , and Tony Diaz - Chicano activist and educator.
WASHINGTON (AP) - It's not just audiotapes.
Omarosa Manigault Newman has a stash of video, emails, text messages and other documentation supporting the claims in her tell-all book about her time in the Trump White House, a person with direct knowledge of the records told The Associated Press Friday.
Manigault Newman has made clear that she plans to continue selectively releasing the pieces of evidence if President Donald Trump and his associates continue to attack her credibility and challenge the claims in her book, "Unhinged." She's already dribbled out audio recordings of conversations, and video clips, texts or email could follow, according to the person who described what Manigault Newman has called a multimedia "treasure trove." The person was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and asked for anonymity.
"I will not be silenced. I will not be intimidated. I'm not going to be bullied by Donald Trump," the former Trump aide told The Associated Press this week as she seemed to dismiss a threat from Trump's campaign. She spoke to the AP hours after Trump's campaign announced it was filing an arbitration action against her alleging she'd violated a signed agreement with the campaign that prohibits her from disclosing confidential information.
She told PBS in a separate interview this week: "I have a significant amount, in fact, a treasure trove, of multimedia backup for everything that's not only in "Unhinged," but everything that I assert about Donald Trump."
Manigault Newman claims Trump officials offered her a job on the campaign as a way of silencing her, after she was fired from the White House. She's accused Trump of being racist and suffering from a mental decline.
The White House has countered by branding Manigault Newman as a disgruntled former staffer with credibility issues who is now trying to profit from a book based on false attacks against an individual she has called a mentor and has admired for more than a decade.
Trump has also lashed out at Manigault Newman, calling her a "lowlife," ''wacky and deranged" and a "dog."
Simon & Schuster this week also dismissed threatened legal action from Trump's campaign. A campaign attorney told Simon & Schuster in a letter that "Unhinged" violated Manigault Newman's confidentiality agreement, but the publisher responded that it was acting "well within" its rights.
"Unhinged" has spent the past few days at No. 2 on Amazon.com's best-seller list, trailing only Rachel Hollis' lifestyle book "Girl, Wash Your Face."
Manigault Newman was director of communications for a White House office that networks with various constituency groups until she was fired last December by chief of staff John Kelly, citing "significant integrity issues." Before joining the administration, Manigault Newman handled African-American outreach for Trump's presidential campaign. She has known Trump since 2003, when she became a contestant on Trump's TV show, "The Apprentice."
She has already released several secret audio recordings, including of the meeting in which she was fired by Kelly.
In another recording, Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is heard offering Manigault Newman $15,000 a month - after she was fired from the White House - for a campaign job requiring her to be "positive." Lara Trump is a senior adviser on Trump's re-election campaign.
Manigault Newman also alleges that tape exists of Trump using a racial slur while working on "The Apprentice." Trump has denied this, saying on Twitter that "I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up."
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AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Omarosa Manigault Newman on Thursday released another secret audio recording that she says proves President Donald Trump wanted to silence her after firing her from the White House.
In the recording played on MSNBC, Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump offers Manigault Newman a job earning $15,000 a month. The job wouldn't require her to report to any particular office or have a specific set of duties, other than to speak positively on Trump's behalf as part of his re-election campaign.
Lara Trump, married to Eric Trump, can be heard on the tape noting a New York Times report that suggested Manigault Newman had inside information that could be damaging to Trump.
"It sounds a little like, obviously, that there are some things you've got in the back pocket to pull out," Lara Trump said. "Clearly, if you come on board the campaign, like, we can't have, we got to ... "
Manigault Newman interjects: "Oh, God, no."
"Everything, everybody, positive, right?" Lara Trump asks.
The secret recording is one of several Manigault Newman released this week to back up her claims in her new book, "Unhinged."
In a written response Thursday, Lara Trump said her entire family was concerned for Manigault Newman after she was fired "because we had no idea about the basis for her dismissal," but "we still wanted her on our team because we cared so much about her personally."
Lara Trump says that's why she reached out and offered Manigault Newman a job on the re-election campaign "before we knew anything about the gross violations of ethics and integrity during her White House tenure."
Lara Trump says that the latest tape is a "fraud" and that the snippets of discussion aired by MSNBC "took place in numerous phone calls over the course of several weeks."
"Woman to woman, I shared a connection with Omarosa as a friend and a campaign sister, and I am absolutely shocked and saddened by her betrayal and violation on a deeply personal level," the president's daughter-in-law said.
The president on Thursday tweeted: "Thank you for the kind words, Omarosa" in a post that included the link to a video, released by the Republican National Committee, that is a compilation of broadcast interviews in which Manigault Newman makes positive comments about Trump. The RNC released the video on Twitter under the headline, "Guess she forgot about these tapes." MSNBC also played the GOP video for Manigault Newman during its interview with her.
A former contestant on Trump's reality TV show "The Apprentice," Manigault Newman was one of Trump's most prominent African-American supporters during his campaign. He hired her to be a White House assistant, earning $179,700 a year as director of communications for the White House office of public liaison.
But she was deeply disliked by many of her colleagues and eventually was ousted by Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, for "significant integrity issues."
According to other recordings released this week, Trump appeared to be in the dark on her December 2017 firing. And Kelly suggested, "If we make this a friendly departure ... you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation."
Manigault Newman alleges there is a tape of Trump using a racial slur while working on "The Apprentice." Trump denies this and has lashed out at his former aide on Twitter, calling her "wacky and deranged," ''not smart" and a "dog."