Trump gave Natalie Harp and 2 aides cash worth about a third of their White House salaries

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump gave $45,000 cash gifts to executive assistant Natalie Harp and two other White House aides, about one-third of each aide's $150,000 government salary.

The payments were described on financial disclosure forms as “Cash Gift for Holidays,” with the forms released publicly late last week.

The Washington Post reported the payments on Tuesday, September 8, citing disclosures filed by the three women.

Trump's gifts matched a third of their salaries

The $45,000 payments went to Harp, Margo Martin, and Chamberlain Harris. Each earns $150,000 from their White House positions, according to an annual report to Congress.

Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under former President George W Bush, said the payments appear to violate a federal statute barring outside supplementation of federal employees' salaries, the newspaper reported.

“He’s clearly trying to make it easier for them financially to work in government service at the White House,” Painter said. “You can’t do that.”

Under the supplementation law, both the person paying supplemental income and the recipient can be liable, the report stated.

Don Fox, former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration, said the available facts do not clearly establish a violation.

He said the law would apply if Trump gave an employee extra money after the employee said they were leaving for private-sector work because of the salary difference.

Ethics experts question the unusual payments

Fox said a large payment from a superior to a subordinate was outside what federal ethics officials typically envisioned, as per the report.

“This just doesn’t happen,” Fox said, recalling that the most expensive holiday gift he received from a federal superior was a fruit basket.

Even without a legal violation, Fox said the payments were “troublesome” because they could leave the recipients feeling indebted to Trump.

“I would feel somewhere between really uncomfortable and then beholden to the person who gave me such a large gift,” he said.

Painter said ethics officials traditionally worry about situations in which an outside employer gives additional money to a federal official to make government service financially easier.

“It’s not like tipping the doorman on Fifth Avenue,” he said. “These are US government employees.”

Trump’s term ends in a little over two years, while the statute of limitations for the supplementation law is five years.

The Trump Justice Department might decline to enforce the law, according to the report.

The aides have worked with Trump since his first term

Harp is known inside the White House as the “human printer” because she carries a portable device that provides Trump with hard copies of news articles and social media posts.

She recently drew increased scrutiny after the Post reported that she was among aides who accompanied Trump on a catering truck while he secretly swapped planes in Turkey because of a potential Iranian assassination threat.

Martin regularly films Trump’s daily activities for social media and sometimes gets closer to him than his Secret Service detail, as per the outlet.

Harris, Trump’s executive assistant, was appointed by him in February to the US Commission of Fine Arts, which oversees his White House ballroom and other Washington-area construction projects.

All four aides, including Walt Nauta, who received a separate $20,000 gift from Trump, have ties to him dating to his first term, the report said.

Harp, Martin, and Harris also worked for Trump in Florida between his presidencies.