Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo Key White House aides got pay raises over past year

Familiar White House faces received pay raises over the last year, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, trade adviser Peter Navarro and deputy press secretary Raj Shah, according to figures released by the Trump administration on Friday.

The raises for Sanders and Navarro put them among 23 White House aides earning the top salary of nearly $180,000, down from 25 last year.


One of the biggest pay boosts went to the first lady Melania Trump’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham — to $155,000 from $115,000. Shah’s went to $165,000 from $155,000.

The salary information on executive office staff was contained in a 12-page document that the White House posted to its website.

Other top earners that make up President Donald Trump’s core group include chief of staff John Kelly, national security adviser John Bolton, senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, White House counsel Don McGahn, legislative affairs director Marc Short, chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow, presidential assistant Johnny DeStefano and social media director Dan Scavino.

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Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, and her husband, senior adviser Jared Kushner, continued to eschew taxpayer-funded salaries, according to the disclosure. And Chris Liddell, the deputy chief of staff for policy coordination, takes a diminished salary of $30,000, a threshold that entitles him to health benefits.

Trump appears to have gone from two to three speechwriters this year (though Miller is responsible for crafting some of the president’s addresses).

Brittany Baldwin received a raise, to $95,000 from $70,000, while Theodore M. Royer went from $95,000 to $115,000. Darren J. Beattie earns $84,600.

The Trump White House’s inaugural salary disclosures, last June, showed that it had nearly 100 fewer staffers than President Barack Obama had in 2016.

Since then, the White House has struggled to fill positions as many of Trump’s best-known aides departed over the last year, including his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon, communications director Hope Hicks and press secretary Sean Spicer.

Other top officials to depart include Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council; deputy national security adviser Dina Powell; Oval Office operations director Keith Schiller; deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka; Omarosa Manigault, director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison; and deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn.

Lorraine Woellert contributed reporting.