One Saturday in early April, Omarosa Manigault caused a stir in the White House.

The "Apprentice" villain turned senior White House official brought members of her 39-person bridal party to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for an extended wedding photo shoot, catching fellow senior aides and some security officials by surprise in her bridal attire. The visitors loudly wandered around, looking to snap photos in the Rose Garden and throughout the West Wing, according to four current and former White House officials.


While it’s unclear whether she received formal permission for the photo shoot, at least some lawyers and other senior aides were not briefed in advance, the officials said. They quickly banned Manigault, director of communications for the Office of the Public Liaison, from posting the pictures online, citing security and ethical concerns.

The incident — which created buzz in the West Wing for weeks — did little to help the reputation of the Office of Public Liaison, seen by some White House officials as one of the most unruly and under-utilized operations in the West Wing, according to eight current and former White House officials and advisers.

The office has floundered for months, these people say, and has drawn particular scrutiny from Chief of Staff John Kelly, who has asked for changes.

Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The Office of the Public Liaison is barely known outside government-insider circles. It functions mainly to cultivate outside support for the president's agenda, working with business, religious and other groups to garner support. The office’s staff sets up events in the White House for community groups like veterans associations and special honorees, attends conferences and events to promote the president and works to create outside political and civic campaigns.

The operation could prove especially useful for Trump, who so far has largely been blocked from carrying out his legislative agenda, which includes a repeal of Obamacare, an overhaul of the tax code and a massive infrastructure package.

Those who have worked in the office in the past say it is an important component to building support for the White House’s agenda.

“The president had a very strong belief that if you bring people into the process early on, that they will have a stake in it and be more likely to work with you,” said Bobbie Kilberg, who ran the office under President George H.W. Bush. "We were trying to build large coalitions across all areas."

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, acknowledged that the office’s operations have been bumpy in the first year. She said the White House is adding staff to the office and that it is undergoing a revamp.

“It’s pretty safe to say the early months were not as smooth as they could have been,” she said.

But she also defended the office, saying it had done valuable work reaching out to veterans and religious groups — and that the office had conducted “dozens and dozens” of listening sessions. She added that the operation had worked hard during the confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to build outside support.

And some outside groups, including religious ones, said they'd had lots of access to Trump. "You talk to religious leaders, and you hear that they've been in in the past eight months more than the past eight years," said Ralph Reed, who leads the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Still, even in a White House riven by chaos in the early months, the office gained notoriety for being a “dumpster fire place to work,” one former senior official said.

Aides in other departments didn’t know what the office did, and George Sifakis, who was named the office’s director in March, gave employees little direction or authority, several officials said. On many days, the staff — about a dozen aides — didn’t know what Sifakis was doing or what they were supposed to be doing, several officials said.

Sifakis declined to comment on the record. A Sifakis ally said many of the events went well, and that he had a far smaller staff than previous offices, but some White House officials don’t agree with that assessment.

"There was no organization, no calendar, nothing," one former official said.

For example, senior White House officials wanted statements from business and community groups to praise Trump at the 100-day mark of the presidency and help improve the news coverage, which Trump was obsessed about.

The office could not deliver the statements as the aides wanted. Staff members were also asked to count how many potential outsider advocates they’d met with, and it created something of a scramble because people were not keeping close tabs, several officials said. Eventually, they estimated an imprecise number for public reports because it was impossible to know, officials said.

Simple events sometimes went off the rails. When the president hosted the country's top teachers earlier this year, the Office of Public Liaison didn't have the Rose Garden or East Room as in years past because they were already booked.

Instead, angry family members who thought they would be going into the White House were held inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as teachers filed into the Oval Office for a photo, and were told they could watch on a small TV screen. Some family members grew upset, with others streaming into the long driveway or trying to enter the West Wing lobby.

After the event, aides were angry. "It was a total disaster," one person with knowledge of the planning said.

The White House offered a different version of events, saying many teachers were happy with the event and that some of those upset were likely union officials who didn't like the president regardless.

The office was also seen as a patronage dumping ground for friends and allies of Trump and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, who installed Sifakis, a fellow Greek and the founder of information management firm Ideagen, and Stephen Munisteri, a Texas Republican Party official who is close to Priebus.

Trump, for his part, installed Manigault and Rudy Giuliani's son Andrew in the office, and attempted to place Anthony Scaramucci in the office before he was ultimately passed over for the director spot.

Five months after being named to the post, Sifakis was swept out as Priebus resigned, and Kelly, his successor, moved Johnny DeStefano, the White House head of personnel, into the director slot on an interim basis. DeStefano has tried to understand aides' basic tasks and give assignments — like reaching out to business and trade groups, or meeting with specific groups.

DeStefano is also trying to persuade others in the West Wing to work with the office more, according to one person who spoke to him. And he has "made peace" with Manigault, said one friend of DeStefano.

But he is not expected to be tapped for the job permanently, and officials said they were unsure to whom it would be offered.

Manigault has been seen as a particular problem in the office — with several high-profile incidents, including an August appearance on a National Association of Black Journalists panel in New Orleans in which she tangled with the moderator and was heckled by audience members for defending Trump. She also stoked a mini-controversy in June by signing invitations for Congressional Black Caucus members to meet Trump as the “Honorable Omarosa Manigault.”

The latter incident became a punch line in the White House, several aides said, adding that there has been a growing effort to keep her out of meetings because she can be a distraction.

Trump continues to like Manigault, even though her access to the Oval Office has been curbed, along with several other senior aides, as part of Kelly’s efforts to control the flow of information to Trump.

Sanders said Manigault had been crucial to outreach with African-American communities, particularly on entrepreneurship.

