Trump gave £33,000 cash gift to 'human printer' Natalie Harp
The 35-year-old former conservative TV anchor has unrestricted access to the US President, but her role is becoming a source of controversy in Washington.
Donald Trump gave £33,000 ($45,000) to Natalie Harp as a Christmas bonus, financial disclosure forms released by his administration have revealed.
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The 35-year-old former conservative TV anchor has unrestricted access to the US President, often acting as his gatekeeper, but her role is becoming a source of controversy in Washington.
She started working for the US President whilst he was campaigning for office. In 2022 and 2023, she wrote letters to him saying: “You’re all that matters to me” and described herself as “unworthy” of him.
At other points in the letters, Ms Harp reportedly told Trump she was envious of others close to him “whose only job seems to be to talk with you and look pretty”, and wrote, “I want that job!”
In the letters, she reflected on her time working as a talk show host, when Trump would call, “and we’d talk about everything and nothing”.
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Ms Harp’s letters and extreme attachment to the president are considered a “potential danger to herself as well as the president” by the US Secret Service, according to Michael Wolff’s book All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America.
The biographer wrote that Ms Harp was part of Trump’s “Charlie’s Angels” – a cohort of female white house employees who had an “avuncular and flirtatious” dynamic with the president.
Ms Harp is one of three female assistants who were given the extravagant present, alongside Margo Martin, his 31-year-old communications adviser and Chamberlain Harris, his 26-year-old deputy director of Oval Office operations.
The three aides, who earn £110,000 ($150,000) a year at the White House, have served the president for years seldom leave his side.
“The gifts at issue here have nothing to do with any of these individuals’ official government duties, and therefore are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards.”
Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, was also given a sizeable Christmas gift – although one that paled in comparison to the three women, sitting at a value of £15,000 ($20,000).
According to the White House’s salary disclosure report to Congress, Mr Nauta is paid £129,000 ($175,000) per year.
According to Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, the payments probably violated a statute that bans supplementing federal employees’ salaries from outside sources, the Washington Post reported.
A spokesperson for the White House has rejected that the gifts broke any rules.
“The president has a longstanding practice of giving Christmas gifts to people in his orbit, including at times employees and aides, both in government and in his time in the private sector,” said Davis Ingle, White House spokesman.
Ms Harp has not commented on the gift.