President Donald Trump gave sizable cash gifts to four White House staffers, including $45,000 (£33,000) to his close aide Natalie Harp, financial disclosures released by his administration show. Two staff members got the same amount as Harp, while his longtime aide and director of Oval Office Operations, Walt Nauta, received $22,000. No other White House staffer has declared any gifts from the president, the documents show. Federal employees are prohibited from receiving outside compensation for their duties.
The White House has described the gifts as personal in nature, unrelated to the staffers’ work and legal under US law. In a statement provided to the BBC, a White House official said that the president “has a longstanding practice of giving Christmas gifts to people in his orbit, including at times employees and aides, both in government and in his time in the private sector”. “The gifts at issue here have nothing to do with any of these individuals’ official government duties, and are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards,” the official added. The cash gifts, totalling $157,000, are marked as a “cash gift for the holidays” for Nauta, Harp and two other officials: communications advisor Margo Martin and Chamberlain Harris, a White House aide who serves as Trump’s executive assistant.
The White House did not answer a separate query from the BBC on why the other 91 listed staff members – including other top aides and First Lady Melania Trump’s top advisors – did not receive gifts. The four recipients of the cash gifts are among those widely considered as close to the US president. Harp, 35, is among Trump’s longest-serving and most loyal aides. She is often trusted with typing out his frequent Truth Social posts, among other responsibilities.
Last month, she was thrust into the national spotlight after she was named as one of a small number of people who stayed with Trump as he secretly swapped planes leaving Turkey last month. Nauta, a US Navy veteran, has also long been at Trump’s side. He served as a White House military valet to the president in his first term, and later joined him as an assistant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office. In June 2023, he was indicted alongside Trump on charges that he mishandled national security documents.
The case was ultimately dismissed. The third recipient, Margo Martin, is well known for documenting Trump’s activities on social media. While the final recipient, 26-year-old Chamberlain Harris, officially serves as the president’s executive assistant. In February, she was also appointed to the US Commission of Fine Arts which oversees the construction of the White House ballroom and other Trump-directed projects in Washington.
Cassandra Burke Roberston, a law professor and director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, told the BBC that “it’s not an easy call” to say whether the cash gifts were ethical or not. “If it were compensation, it’s not allowed,” she said. “Of course, that’s where the administration’s argument comes in, that it’s a social gift done out of friendship. Not compensation.” Additionally, Robertson said that even if legal, the gifts – along with recent controversies involving prediction markets and cryptocurrencies – could raise eyebrows among the public.
“It does add to a generalised perception of really rampant conflicts of interest,” she said. There are no other known instances of a serving US president giving cash gifts to staffers at the White House. Many presidents, however, have given souvenirs or personal mementos to staff. President Barack Obama, for example, gave former press secretary Robert Gibbs a framed necktie that he had once borrowed ahead of the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
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