President Trump's campaign is alleging that the lawsuit violates the non-disclosure agreement the outreach worker signed. | Scott Olson/Getty Images Trump campaign moves to quash sexual discrimination suit against VA official

President Donald Trump's presidential campaign on Monday demanded private arbitration of a $25 million lawsuit brought by a Hispanic outreach worker who alleges she was slandered and harassed by a campaign official who now holds a senior interim position at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In a filing in Manhattan Superior Court, the campaign said that by suing the campaign and making public her allegations against Camilo Sandoval, Jessica Denson violated a campaign non-disclosure agreement. Sandoval is now executive-in-charge for the VA Office of Information and Technology.


The campaign demanded that Denson's suit be dismissed.

Mandatory arbitration and non-disclosure agreements are an increasingly common feature of private employment contracts. According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, fully 55 percent of all workers have forfeited their right to sue their employers as a condition of employment. Last month the Supreme Court affirmed the legality of a common type of mandatory arbitration in which workers forfeit their right to participate in class action lawsuits against their employer.

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But NDAs and mandatory arbitration remain a rarity in the fishbowl environment of presidential campaigns, and candidate Trump's insistence that his campaign workers sign extremely strict NDAs was widely noted in 2016. In March the Washington Post reported that President Trump required senior White House aides to sign NDAs as well, though it's doubtful those would hold up in court.

Denson charged in the November suit that Sandoval, her one-time boss in the campaign office in Trump Tower, slandered, harassed and sexually discriminated against her in violation of New York City’s human rights laws.

After campaign CEO Steve Bannon promoted Denson in the summer of 2016, according to the suit, Sandoval threatened to fire her, and began a rumor campaign aimed at discrediting her, including a claim that she had leaked some Trump tax records. The campaign failed to come to her defense, she alleges.

