Trump campaign preparing to sue ex-staffer who wrote tell-all book, official says

A top official for President Trump’s 2020 campaign said Tuesday that the campaign was preparing to file a lawsuit against former White House communications aide Cliff Sims for violating a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). 

“The Trump campaign is preparing to file suit against Cliff Sims for violating our NDA,” Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Donald J. Trump for President Inc., wrote on Twitter.

The remark came the same day Sims’s tell-all book, “Team of Vipers,” was published.

The Trump campaign is preparing to file suit against Cliff Sims for violating our NDA. https://t.co/Xl1N95fPkH

— Michael Glassner (@michaelglassner) January 29, 2019

Sims’s memoir, released Tuesday, recounts his time working in the White House and reportedly details White House dysfunction and infighting.

{mosads}Sims, who served as director of White House message strategy and as a special assistant to the president, left his position in May. Among other things, the former White House staffer recalls being told by former White House chief of staff John Kelly that working for Trump was the “worst [expletive] job I’ve ever had.”

“People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired,” Kelly reportedly said to Sims. “If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”

Sims describes White House counselor Kellyanne Conway as a “cartoon villain brought to life” who bad-mouthed other staffers to the press. He also writes that White House senior adviser Stephen Miller once said he’d be happy if “not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil.”

Trump lashed out at Sims on Tuesday, calling him a “low level staffer” that he hardly knew. 

“Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction,” Trump tweeted. “He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer. He signed a non-disclosure agreement. He is a mess!”

Sims’s book is the latest in a string of accounts about Trump’s presidency. Former staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman and former FBI Director James Comey have written accounts of the White House, among others. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.