Newly released financial disclosures show that Donald Trump gave three women in his White House inner circle $45,000 each as personal holiday gifts.
Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant; Margo Martin, his 31-year-old communications adviser; and Chamberlain Harris, a 26-year-old aide, all disclosed the same thing: a $45,000 “Cash Gift for Holidays” from Trump.
Not a watch. Not a luxury gift basket. Not even an unusually generous Christmas bonus.
Cash. $45,000 each.
That comes to $135,000 for the three aides. And considering each woman reportedly earns $150,000 a year working in the White House, Trump’s gift amounted to nearly a third of their annual government salary.
That alone would be unusual. But it’s the ethics questions surrounding the gifts that have really raised eyebrows.
Richard Painter, who served as the White House’s chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told The Washington Post that he believes the payments appear to run afoul of federal rules designed to prevent outside sources from supplementing the salaries of government employees.
“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 strongly disagrees.
Officials say Trump has a long history of giving holiday gifts to people close to him and insist the payments were personal gifts that had nothing to do with the women’s official government duties.
And not every ethics expert is ready to call it a violation.
Don Fox, a former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said the information currently available isn’t enough to determine that Trump broke the law.
Still, even Fox was struck by the sheer size of the gifts.
“This just doesn’t happen,” he told the Post.
For comparison, Fox said the most valuable gift he could remember receiving from a superior during his own government career was a fruit basket.
Then things get even more curious.
Walt Nauta, Trump’s longtime male aide who served as his White House valet during his first term and later followed him to Mar-a-Lago, also received a personal holiday gift from Trump.
His gift?
$20,000.
That’s certainly no stocking stuffer. But it’s less than half of what each of the three female aides received.
The disclosures offer no explanation for the difference.
Harp: $45,000.
Martin: $45,000.
Harris: $45,000.
Nauta: $20,000.
The Washington Post said it could find no other publicly documented example of a U.S. president handing White House employees personal cash gifts on this scale. The government ethics experts interviewed by the newspaper couldn’t recall anything comparable either.
Painter summed up just how unusual the situation is with one line:
“It’s not like tipping the doorman on Fifth Avenue … These are U.S. government employees.”
Whatever ultimately comes of the ethics questions, one thing seems clear:
The White House Christmas gift exchange apparently operates on a very different budget than the rest of us.
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