Secret recordings of Trump and his chief of staff are seen as security breach and have also left lingering questions

Omarosa Manigault Newman has released secret recordings of her conversations with Donald Trump and his chief of staff, John Kelly, which have made international headlines but have also left lingering questions.

What happened?

Manigault Newman says she secretly recorded Kelly firing her in the White House Situation Room in December 2017, and she played the recording on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday. On Monday, she released another recording, aired on NBC’s Today program, in which Trump appears to express surprise that she had been ousted.

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The former White House aide, who had previously been a contestant on Trump’s reality television show The Apprentice, shared the recording as part of her promotional tour for her new book about her stint in the White House, Unhinged. The Guardian first reported excerpts from the book, which also included claims that Trump has used racial epithets.

Is this normal?

Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs in the Department of Homeland Security, pointed to Manigault Newman’s recording device as signifying the lack of “security culture” in the Trump administration. The former Obama administration aide noted that Trump has “essentially mocked this ideal of a security culture”. She pointed out instances such as White House staffers working without security clearances, Trump using an unsecured phone and his 2017 dinner with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe about North Korea among diners at Mar-a-Lago.

Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer in Washington, noted that it was unusual for a personnel meeting to happen in the Situation Room. In his opinion, the most obvious reason would be that the White House “had its own suspicions that she was the type of person who might try to secretly record [the meeting], and put it in the Situation Room.”

Is this a security risk?

Moss also told the Guardian that Manigault Newman’s use of a recording device presented counterintelligence risks. “All it takes is one foreign agency hacking [the recording device], and setting it to passive record mode,” said Moss. The result would mean all conversations, not just those Manigault Newman chose to record, would be “accessible to foreign entities”.

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This concern was shared by Kayyem. “There might be the perception, particularly by our enemies, that the entire White House might be compromised, and that’s kind of scary,” she said, adding: “The audience isn’t just us and Omarosa and Trump. It’s the Chinese and the Russians.”

Is recording in the Situation Room a crime?

Moss said, however, that just because the conversation occurred in the Situation Room, which is actually a secured series of connected rooms, there is “no real obvious criminal liability”. All staffers entering the area must lock away their cell phones and other insecure electronic devices. But he noted the violation would likely be enough to deny Manigault Newman a security clearance if she ever wishes to work for the federal government in the future.

What has the White House said?

“The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. She added: “Then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee.”



