Trump's assistant received $45,000 in gifts from the president
U.S. President Donald Trump gave generous holiday gifts to four of his aides at the White House. Among them was his personal assistant, Natalie Harp. Her annual salary at the White House is $150,000, and she received $45,000 from Trump—about one-third of her annual salary.
Communications adviser Margo Martin and Deputy Director of Operations in the Oval Office Chamberlain Harris also received $45,000 each, while Director of Operations in the Oval Office Walt Nauta received $20,000.
All three, like Harp, have substantial salaries: Martin and Harris earn $150,000 a year, while Nauta earns $175,000.
According to a White House spokesperson, Trump “has long had a practice of giving Christmas gifts to people in his inner circle—including staff members and aides—both during his time in government and in the private sector.”
However, he did not specify whether other staff members had received similar gifts from the president, but noted that the cash payments are not related to “these individuals’ performance of their official government duties and, therefore, are fully in line with applicable legal and ethical standards.”
For his part, Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration and a Trump critic, stated that these payments likely violate federal law, which prohibits federal employees from receiving additional compensation from outside sources.
“He is clearly trying to ease their financial situation while they are serving in the White House. You can’t do that,” Painter noted.
Who Is Natalie Harp?
Before Natalie Harp—who bears a striking resemblance to Trump’s daughter Ivanka—began working at the White House, she was an anchor for Fox News.
In the Trump administration, she was nicknamed “the printer girl” because she carries a portable printer with her to print out media articles and social media posts favorable to the president, since he prefers to read important information on paper rather than on a screen.
Harp was spotted among those accompanying the U.S. leader at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, in September of this year.
Whether there is any relationship between the assistant—who has no official status—and the American leader remains an open question. Many, including her brother Preston, have noted that she has an “unhealthy” relationship with the politician. According to Preston, his sister’s fascination with Trump stems from the ideology of “American exceptionalism” instilled in them by their parents, who homeschooled them:
Natalie first met Trump while battling stage-two bone cancer and believes he saved her life. Now Harp is a constant presence at the White House and often stays with Trump late into the night, when he is particularly active on social media.
The president makes no secret of his fondness for Harp. For example, one passage in the book describes how, how the U.S. president “began telling his staff that Natalie (he refers to her using the French pronunciation with the stress on the last syllable) is the only one who ‘loves him as much as his wife and children do.’”
“You’ll all go out and make money. She’ll never leave me,” he reportedly said.
Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff, as well as Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, authors of the book *Regime Change: Inside Donald Trump’s Imperial Presidency,” claimed that Harp sent the president some rather ambiguous notes.
“You’re all that matters to me,” read one of the notes. Natalie also told Trump that she never wanted to let him down, and even called him “the Alpha and the Omega.” The messages were so strange that Susie Wiles, who later became chief of staff to Trump at the White House, asked herself, “Where am I?”
Attention on Harp intensified after The Washington Post reported last month that she was part of a small circle of staff members who accompanied Trump in a supply van. In this vehicle, the president was secretly transported to another plane for his departure from Turkey to avoid a possible assassination attempt by Iran.
The Washington Post reported this, citing new financial reports published by the U.S. president’s administration.
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