Court ruling hands Omarosa major advantage over Donald Trump
Even as Omarosa continues to release more of the secret recordings she made of Donald Trump and his administration, Trump keeps seeking ways to try to shut her down. He’s told staffers that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to arrest her, and while that’s a jarring abuse of power, it’s highly unlikely to go anywhere. However, Trump has also seized on another, slightly less unrealistic angle that he thought was going to work.
Donald Trump has had all of his people sign a nondisclosure contract which he thought binded them to arbitration. Accordingly, he filed for arbitration this week to try to force Omarosa to stop releasing tapes. But in a matter of rather interesting timing, a judge handed down a ruling today in a separate case which just happens to directly impact the Trump-Omarosa battle.
Former Trump staffer Jessica Denson has been engaged in a legal battle since last year about whether she had the right to go public about the alleged sexual harassment she was subjected to during the campaign, without having to go through arbitration. The judge ruled today that the arbitration clause is very narrow in definition, and applies to almost no situations. This instantly undermines Donald Trump’s current effort at trying to force Omarosa into arbitration.
It’s not that this effort was likely to succeed to begin with. White House employees like Omarosa work for the federal government and not for Donald Trump, meaning that the nondisclosure contract was eventually going to be ruled unenforceable anyway. But today’s ruling gives Omarosa the immediate upper hand in her legal battle with Trump. The bottom line: when it comes to trying to stop Omarosa from releasing more tapes, Trump is now out of ammo.
