The latest batch of White House interns will apparently have to be sneaky if they want to leak anything.
According to the Daily Beast, President Donald Trump’s White House administration forced its 2019 interns to sign non-disclosure agreements. Not only that, but during a session described as “ethics training,” officials from the White House’s general counsel office warned the interns that any breach of the NDA would result in professional and financial turmoil. The interns were not provided copies of the agreements, the site reported.
The report comes a day after BuzzFeed News wrote about a class-action lawsuit filed by a former Trump 2016 campaign staffer, which argues that staffers and volunteers that worked on the campaign should be allowed to speak freely about their time and work on the trail due to the over-reaching nature of that specific NDA. It’s unclear whether the language used in that NDA is similar to the one signed by the new White House interns.
What is clear is that Trump has plenty of reasons to want to keep the threat of a lawsuit dangling above the heads of his subordinates. He tends to be a gross, awful boss, and that stokes the best kind of gossip. Take, for instance, the incident last December in one of his former handlers hopped on stage as a comedian and recalled Trump being a “speed freak.” Or when Omarasa spurned Trump’s attempts to shell out $15,000 a month for her silence and wrote one of the countless tell-all books that have popped up in the first two years of his presidency. (Trump and the White House have denied all these claims, of course.) Trump’s war to prevent these leaks went so far that in early 2018, the Justice Department, then helmed by Jeff Sessions, threw its weight at a New York Times reporter and a Senate Intelligence Committee aide to send a message to other leakers.
The White House declined to comment to the Daily Beast; I have also asked for comment and will update if I hear back.
White House interns, if you’re reading this and have a backbone, leak the good shit anyway. Doesn’t even have to be the pee tape, any tea will do.