Lawyers for Omarosa Manigault Newman have accused the Justice Department of intentionally preventing her from completing and filing the financial disclosures that she was required to tender after she had been fired at Dec. 2017 in the Trump administration. That accusation came in a Thursday court record filed to oppose a previous authorities movement to have the case against Omarosa opposition an earlier DOJ motion to end the case in the government’s favor.
The center lawsuit, registered at June 2019, attempts to impose a civil penalty of $61,585 on Omarosa for”knowingly and willfully” violating the Ethics in Government Act (EIGA) by”failing to submit the necessary public financial disclosure report after her employment terminated together with the Executive Office of the President.”
Omarosa was the manager of communications in the White House Office of Public Liaison.
Despite having dropped a variety of the preceding administration’s contentious legal battles, the Biden government has continued to pursue its own lawsuit against the former reality show star for supposedly failing to follow legally mandated processes after leaving the White House.
The DOJ under President Joe Biden last week asked U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to grant the government’s request for summary judgment in the situation, stating Manigault Newman made”no attempt” to file her sin till late 2019–“over a year and a half later it was due and after this lawsuit was started.”
But in a response submitted in Washington, D.C. federal courtroom on Thursday, Manigault Newman and her attorney John Phillips claimed that the Trump White House kept hidden the data Omarosa had to finish the disclosures by refusing to return her personal consequences. The record says the move has been an act of retaliation after Omarosa published her tell-all book Unhinged.
“It’s an undisputed, incontrovertible fact the prematurely filed this lawsuit whilst penalizing and blowing requests for aid by Defendant, while actually intentionally withholding, if not converting, her possessions (‘the boxes along with the records inside them’) while just selectively escalating her claims coinciding with the President’s own hateful tweets and public vengeance within her book about her time in the White House,” the document says. “Plaintiff’s assertion that Defendant’s inability to file her termination report in 30 days stands as an egregious, deliberate mischaracterization of the facts. Instead, Mrs. Manigault Newman was fulfilled with continuous bad interference that prevented her from successfully completing the report on statutory conditions.”
Omarosa further says she requested her personal effects a few times following her termination — but that the White House refused to reunite them. She claimed that the government, by”intentionally withholding information,” negated some element of willfulness on her part.
“The Department of Justice can’t require a precise and timely report but intentionally undermine the timely and accurate completion of that report,” Phillips wrote. “It’s, respectfully, absurd when Defendant or her counselor request assistance from such parties, they are often met with delayed answers and vague directions.”
Omarosa, while claiming that the DOJ is selectively persecuting her and that the Trump lawsuit has always and only been above”revenge,” asks the court to put a finish subjective authorities of their EIGA.
“Revenge. It’s this former President’s trademark and this Court should end it,” the filing concludes. “This litigation was filed , inappropriately, unconstitutionally and in violation of law.”
Only weeks ago, the DOJ fell an identical lawsuit against former first lady Melania Trump’s former friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff later Wolkoff penned the tell-all Melania and Me.
