Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman on Tuesday claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has interviewed her as part of his ongoing investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Have you been interviewed by the special counsel?” NBC’s Katy Tur asked Manigault Newman on MSNBC, following up on the former Trump aide’s assertion the previous day that she would be willing to speak to Mueller “again.”
“I have,” Manigault Newman replied.
She declined to answer Tur’s further questions, saying she could not provide any more details.
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“That’s the extent I can go in discussing that as well,” said Manigault Newman, who was fired from the White House last year. “I feel like my hands are tied because, as you know, I do love to communicate about the things that are going on in my life, but unfortunately, I can’t elaborate.”
Manigault Newman, who worked on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and in the White House as an assistant to the president, has stated repeatedly that she is willing to comply with Mueller’s investigation.
The reality TV star in recent days has released two tapes she secretly recorded during her time in the White House as part of a media tour to promote her new memoir “Unhinged.” She claims she has more recordings and would be willing to give them to the special counsel.
On Tuesday, Trump’s campaign announced it had filed for arbitration against Manigault Newman, alleging she violated a 2016 nondisclosure agreement by publishing the explosive exposé, which depicts the president as a mentally unstable and cruel leader.
“I don’t believe that I violated [the nondisclosure agreement] but I’m going to leave that to the lawyers to sort that out,” Manigault Newman told Tur on MSNBC. “It’s interesting that he’s trying to silence me. So what is he trying to hide? What is he afraid of?”
In the book, Manigault Newman accuses Trump of using racial slurs and his campaign of forcing women to “wear dresses and heels.”
“If he hadn’t said anything that was derogatory or demeaning to African-Americans and women, why would he go to this extent to try to shut me down?” Manigault Newman said on MSNBC. “I think he should be afraid of being exposed as the misogynist and the racist that he is.”
Trump and other White House officials have vehemently denied Manigault Newman’s claims.
“There are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa,” Trump said in response to her claim that he used the “N-word.”
“I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up.”
Trump and Manigault Newman formerly had a close and mutually supportive public relationship. She famously said before his election that his critics would have to “bow down” to him.
–Updated at 2:53 p.m.