The case is just one of many lingering court battles the campaign has launched but not completed with two weeks left before Election Day.
Donald Trump’s campaign wants Omarosa Manigault Newman to pay up for penning an incriminating tell-all book about the president in 2018. But it’s the Trump campaign that hasn’t paid its bills.
The delinquent $52,000 payment — revealed in a previously unreported letter dated Oct. 14 and obtained by POLITICO — is just one example of how the Trump campaign is handling the flurry of legal actions it has taken to both protect the president and attack his enemies in the final weeks of the campaign.
In some instances, the campaign is pressing ahead. In others, it has let the cases go dormant. The through line, however, is that the campaign has started a lot of fights in court, yet is not close to resolving them with just two weeks left until Election Day.
In the action against Manigault Newman, the campaign may simply let the case dissolve. In 2018, the Trump campaign filed an arbitration case against the former West Wing aide over her book, which rocked the White House with stories of Trump using lewd, sexist and racist language. At one point, Trump’s attorneys suggested Newman pay for a nearly $1 million ad campaign “to counteract the long-term adverse effects” of her remarks.
Yet the campaign has thus far stiffed the arbitrator assigned to mediate the case, according to a letter sent to the parties in the case. If Trump’s attorneys don’t pay the outstanding bill by next week, the case could be tossed out.
The dispute over Manigault Newman’s book is far from the only legal thread left dangling for the Trump campaign.
The campaign is helping fight accusations Trump harassed and sexually assaulted women. It’s helping keep documents about his business deals hidden. Other cases are proactive, such as attempts to enforce nondisclosure agreements and to punish media companies the campaign accuses of defamation. And it is responding to lawsuits from people who say they were assaulted at Trump events, including one from a Missouri man who claimed he was arrested after laughing at a MAGA rally.
Taken together, the cases reflect the legal morass the Trump campaign will face, win or lose, after Nov. 3.
“Even if he loses the election, very little actually ends once Trump leaves the White House in January 2021,” said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer whose firm represented former White House aide Cliff Sims, who was the target of a Trump campaign suit for violating a nondisclosure agreement when he published his own White House memoir.
“Litigation Trump has personally brought under his own name or through the campaign, whether it be protecting his tax returns or suing Omarosa, will continue for however long there is money to pay the lawyers,” Moss added.
The Trump campaign and its attorney, Charles Harder, known for representing wrestler Hulk Hogan in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker, did not respond to questions about the Manigault Newman case and the unpaid bill.
It’s not the first time Trump, a businessman with a global real estate footprint, and his campaign have faced accusations that they didn’t pay the bills.
Private contractors, bartenders, painters, real estate brokers and others have all claimed that Trump didn’t adequately compensate them for their work before he was sworn into office. More recently, Trump has been accused of failing to pay local officials who provide thousands of dollars’ in security assistance to the president’s campaign during rallies.
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Donald Trump’s campaign wants Omarosa Manigault Newman to pay up for penning an incriminating tell-all book about the president in 2018.
But it’s the Trump campaign that hasn’t paid its bills. https://t.co/txJVNawbIf
— POLITICO (@politico) October 20, 2020
Typical Trump. Don’t pay the bills. I think that may be why the big city near me fought off an attempt by Trump to hold a rally there last week. The 2016 campaign never paid for security and other expenses pertaining to a rally last year.
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