Trump rewards Natalie Harp and other close aides with cash

US President Donald Trump gave $US45,000 ($62,000) cash gifts to his executive assistant Natalie Harp and two of his other young, loyal White House employees, according to financial disclosures released by the administration.

On their disclosure forms, which were released publicly late last week, the three women described the payments as “Cash Gift for Holidays”. The gifts amount to about one-third of the $US150,000 ($207,000) salaries they each earn from their White House positions, according to an annual report to Congress.

Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and a critic of Trump, said the payments appear to violate a federal statute that prohibits the supplementation of federal employees’ salaries from outside sources.

“He’s clearly trying to make it easier for them financially to work in government service at the White House,” Painter said. “You can’t do that.”

The White House and the three recipients of Trump’s gifts did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Harp, a 35-year-old aide who rarely leaves Trump’s side, is known within the White House as the “human printer” because she carries a portable device to provide Trump with his preferred hard copies of news articles and social media posts.

She has come under increased scrutiny since The Washington Post reported last month that she was one of a handful of close staffers who accompanied Trump on a catering truck that transported him under concealment as he secretly swapped planes to depart Turkey in response to a potential Iranian assassination threat.

Days after the report, Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) said at a campaign rally that Trump would rather “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace” – a reference to the airplane given to Trump by the Qatari royal family – as he accused the president of neglecting his duties. The remark sparked backlash from the White House and conservative media figures that intensified the spotlight on Harp.

These are US government employees. If you want a job where you get tips, you shouldn’t be working for the US government.Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush

Trump also gave $US45,000 to Margo Martin, a 31-year-old communications adviser who often gets closer to the president than his Secret Service detail to film his daily activities for social media, and Chamberlain Harris, a 26-year-old White House aide who serves as Trump’s executive assistant. Trump in February appointed Harris to the US Commission of Fine Arts, which has oversight of his White House ballroom and other Washington-area construction projects.

Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, reported a $US20,000 ($28,000) gift from the president. Nauta, who earns $US175,000 ($242,000), also accompanied Trump on the catering truck in Turkey.

He served as a valet in the first Trump White House and was a key witness and co-defendant in the Justice Department’s probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. A judge dismissed the charges in 2024, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith, who had brought the case, was improperly appointed.

There are no other public instances of US presidents giving staff employed by the White House large cash payments. Government ethics experts said they were not aware of any other payments of this scale from a superior to a subordinate government worker.

Traditionally, government ethics officials worry about situations in which a company that previously employed a federal official tries to provide additional money to make it easier for them to serve in government, Painter said.

When employers give a holiday gift to a person who works in their house, that is considered part of their income, he added.

“It’s not like tipping the doorman on Fifth Avenue,” he said. “These are US government employees. If you want a job where you get tips, you shouldn’t be working for the US government.”

Under the law, both the person who pays the supplemental income and the person who receives it are liable. The Trump Justice Department might decline to enforce the law, but the statute of limitations is five years. Trump’s term ends in a little over two years.

Federal employees are also subject to restrictions on what gifts they can give or receive to ensure government decisions remain impartial.

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Don Fox, the former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) in the Obama administration, said it was not clear from the available facts that the payments violate the prohibition on supplementation. He said that would be the case if Trump made the gifts after one of the employees said they were leaving for the private sector because they couldn’t live on what they were making, and he gave them a supplement to level the disparity in salaries.

There are rules that restrict employees from giving gifts to their superiors over concerns they could be abused to curry favour. But a large payment to a subordinate is “not a circumstance that OGE ever really envisioned,” Fox said. “This just doesn’t happen.”

He said the most expensive gift he remembered receiving as a federal employee from a superior was a fruit basket around the holidays. Even in the absence of any violation, however, Fox said he still found the payments “troublesome” because they could leave the aides indebted to Trump.

“I would feel somewhere between really uncomfortable and then beholden to the person who gave me such a large gift,” he said.

Harp, Martin, Harris and Nauta all have ties to Trump dating to his first term, and they were all among a small inner circle of aides who worked for Trump in Florida in between his presidencies. Harp, Martin and Harris have limited work experience that isn’t tied to Trump.

Harp gained national attention in 2019 for a LinkedIn post in which she credited a law Trump signed in 2018 expanding access to experimental treatments with saving her life following a Stage 2 bone cancer diagnosis. Medical experts have cast doubt on those claims.

Harp spoke about the experience at the 2020 Republican National Convention. As an anchor with One America News, she frequently promoted Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election. She began working for Trump in 2022 after leaving the network.

Martin began working for the Trump White House as a press assistant in 2019 and continued to work as a press secretary for Trump after the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Harris began her career at the White House and was known as the “receptionist of the United States” during Trump’s first term.

Nauta is a Guam native who enlisted in the Navy in 2001. By 2021, he was promoted to the rank of senior chief culinary specialist, according to military records. Nauta was working in the White House at that time, and Trump promoted him to be his valet, according to court records.

Valets are often known as “body men,” following politicians closely so that they can provide them with everything from snacks to schedules.

They each reported that they had no income or employment assets from a spouse in their disclosures.

The Washington Post

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