Donald Trump gave cash holiday gifts of $45,000 each to longtime aide Natalie Harp and two other White House aides, financial disclosures released by his administration last week show. The other two were communications adviser Margo Martin and aide Chamberlain Harris, while director of Oval Office operations Walt Nauta received $20,000, PBS NewsHour reported. Nauta's gift appears as $22,000 in the BBC's account, which put the four payments at $157,000.
What do the disclosures show? The gifts were listed in the staffers' annual financial disclosure forms, PBS NewsHour reported. Harp, Martin and Harris are each paid $150,000 a year and Nauta $175,000, the White House's salary report to Congress shows. No other White House staffer has declared a gift from the president, the BBC reported, and the White House did not answer its question on why the other 91 listed staff members received none.
How has the White House responded? A White House official said Trump "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 official said the gifts were unrelated to the aides' official duties and "entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards."
Why are the payments questioned? Federal employees are generally barred from receiving outside compensation for their work, and experts warn the gifts could leave aides financially beholden to the president, PBS NewsHour reported. Cassandra Burke Robertson, director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University, told the BBC it is "not an easy call" to say whether the gifts were ethical. "If it were compensation, it's not allowed," she said, but "that's where the administration's argument comes in, that it's a social gift done out of friendship." There are no other known instances of a serving US president giving cash gifts to White House staffers, though many presidents have given souvenirs or personal mementos to staff.
Figures referenced: Donald Trump. — JudgeMarket.
