Trump gave three White House aides $45,000 each for Christmas

BS BULLETIN:

Financial disclosures show President Donald Trump gave $45,000 cash holiday gifts to three White House aides: Natalie Harp, Margo Martin and Chamberlain Harris.
Each woman earns $150,000 a year, meaning Trump’s gift equaled roughly 30% of her annual government salary. Oval Office operations director Walt Nauta separately disclosed a $20,000 gift from Trump.
The White House says the gifts were personal Christmas presents unrelated to government work and permissible under ethics rules. Government ethics experts interviewed by The Washington Post disagreed over whether the payments could run afoul of federal law.

President Donald Trump apparently takes the White House Christmas bonus to another level.

Newly released financial disclosures show Trump personally gave three members of his White House inner circle $45,000 apiece as holiday gifts.

Executive assistant Natalie Harp, communications adviser Margo Martin and deputy director of Oval Office operations Chamberlain Harris each listed a $45,000 payment from Trump described as a “Cash Gift for Holidays.”

The amount is particularly striking compared with their government salaries. Each earns $150,000 annually, according to the White House salary disclosure cited by the Associated Press. That makes Trump’s gift equivalent to about three-and-a-half months of their government pay.

And they weren’t the only ones.

Walt Nauta, Trump’s director of Oval Office operations and former personal valet, disclosed receiving $20,000 from the president. Nauta earns $175,000 annually.

The Washington Post, which first reported the payments Tuesday night, said government ethics specialists it interviewed could not identify another public example of a president giving subordinate White House employees personal cash gifts on this scale.

Whether the payments present a legal problem isn’t settled.

Richard Painter, who served as the White House’s chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush and is a Trump critic, told the Post he believes the gifts could violate the federal prohibition against supplementing a government employee’s salary from an outside source.

Former acting Office of Government Ethics director Don Fox was less definitive, telling the Post the available facts don’t establish that the payments constitute prohibited salary supplementation. He nevertheless questioned the implications of a subordinate receiving such a large personal gift from a superior.

The White House rejects the legal concern entirely.

An administration official told AP that Trump has a longstanding practice of giving Christmas presents to employees and others around him, both in government and in private business. The official said these payments were unrelated to the recipients’ government duties and therefore permissible under applicable ethics rules.

Harp may be the most recognizable of the recipients. She is frequently at Trump’s side and has become known as his “human printer” because she carries a portable printer and supplies the president with hard copies of news articles and social-media posts.

MY QUICK TAKE:

Some bosses give you a ham. Some give you a Starbucks card. Apparently Donald Trump skips directly to $45,000 and Merry Christmas.

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

1 Comment

Toxic Deplorable B Woodman on September 9, 2026 at 10:20 am

Nothing wrong with any of this. It’s not like the gift receivers are influencing policies or making laws. And as far as we know, they’re not “sleeping with the boss”.
So what’s the brewhaha?

My only comment is that PDJT47 should have made the gifts in cash, undisclosed, under the table. “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me, you can’t prove it.” (thx Bart)