Life just got a little worse still for scandal-ridden ex-President Donald Trump after a court arbitrator just ruled that he has to pay a massive more than $1.3 million in attorney’s fees and costs to former 2016 campaign staffer, Trump White House aide, and Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman following a lengthy and contentious legal battle over whether she violated a Trump campaign non-disclosure agreement, according to a bombshell new report from the New York Times.
Andrew Brown, of the American Arbitration Association, served as the arbiter in the ongoing legal dispute between Trump and Newman and handed down the award this week.
The lawsuit was originally filed in arbitration by the Trump campaign back in August 2018, on the very same day as the release of Omarosa’s behind-the-scenes tell-all book, Unhinged: An Insiders Account of the Trump White House.
Back in September, the arbiter ruled in Manigault Newman’s favor and smacked down the ex-president’s campaign’s claims that the former staffer had violated the non-disclosure agreement.
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At the time, the arbiter said that the Trump campaign’s NDA was “overbroad, indefinite, and unreasonable,” and went on to add that the terminology used in the non-disclosure document went “far beyond what would be reasonably expected to protect” the Trump campaign’s interests.
According to the court filing, Manigault Newman was originally seeking far more, a total of more than $3.4 million, from the former president and his campaign in legal fees and costs. Throughout the legal battle, the arbiter in the case repeatedly rejected multiple general objections raised by the Trump campaign regarding the former staffer’s request — including one claim that Omarosa and her legal team’s behavior was in bad faith during the proceedings.
But ultimately, Newman was awarded a much lesser amount, as the arbiter said he was unable to rubber-stamp the “staggering fee request” based on the “flimsy support” the former Trump staffer and reality TV contestant had provided. In the end, the arbiter calculated his own dollar amount to award to Omarosa based on the number of hours her legal team worked and the hourly rate that they charge, citing procedural defects with Newman’s filing.
Once it was all said and done, Omarosa Manigault Newman was awarded $1,293,568.75 for attorney’s fees and $17,304.73 for costs, for a grand total of $1,310,873.48 to be paid by Trump.
