Election campaign workers are asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. A federal judge in Manhattan last year declared the confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses that are part of such NDAs “invalid and unenforceable”. Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign has therefore released former staffers from key sections of a nondisclosure agreement, freeing them to talk about their experience — good or bad.
On Tuesday, Trump campaign attorney Jared Blumetti filed a letter with a declaration signed in June by a campaign committee official stating that they would not “ever enforce or attempt to enforce any confidentiality or non-disparagement provisions contained in any written agreements signed by any employees, independent contractors, or volunteers who worked for the campaign on the 2016 Presidential Election.”
Blumetti also wrote that the campaign mailed a notice to former staffers alerting them that they were no longer bound by those parts of the agreement.
A former staffer, Jessica Denson, had brought a suit against the campaign officials. On learning about the ruling, Denson stated, “In another resounding victory for my team, the Trump campaign is waving the white flag in my yearslong battle for truth and accountability” then adding, “But we will not allow the Trump campaign to circumvent the legal steps necessary to ensure that these NDAs are wholly unenforceable by both the campaign itself and the multitude of third parties it purports to empower, including the former president himself.”
US District Judge Paul Gardephe ruled last year that the language in the confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses — which restricted what staffers could say not only about the campaign, but also about Trump, his family, and his business — was too vague and broad to be enforceable.
Arbitrators presiding over NDA fights involving other former campaign staffers reached similar conclusions; earlier this year an arbitrator ordered the campaign to pay $350,000 to former staffer Alva Johnson for trying to press the “unenforceable” agreement.
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