An ex-Trump campaign staffer filed a class-action suit on Wednesday, seeking to toss out all nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements that campaigner staffers were required to sign.
In the claim, filed before the American Arbitration Association, Jessica Denson, who worked for the Trump campaign in 2016, said the campaign made staffers, volunteers and contractors sign agreements that barred them from ever disclosing confidential information or publicly criticizing the president, his family or his company.
Denson's lawyers argue that the nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) should be invalidated because they are in violation of federal, state and local public policy and that their contents are "impermissibly vague," allowing Trump discretion to define what is "private."
The lawsuit also asserts that the agreements quash staffers' rights to seek justice for "workplace misconduct," potentially subjecting them to "grievous financial penalty for the mere act of criticizing" the president.
"The Form NDAs effectively strip employees, contractors, and volunteers of their ability to pursue any of their rights to redress workplace misconduct," Denson's lawyers wrote in Wednesday's filing. "Anything and everything they could do will of necessity contain some information that a Trump Person could find disparaging or a disclosure of confidential information. Any complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department of Labor or National Labor Relations Board, just to name a few, could result in a secret arbitration and a costly award."
In November 2017, Denson filed a lawsuit alleging she encountered sexual discrimination and harassment while working for the Trump campaign. One month later, the campaign ordered her to pay $50,000, claiming the filing breached her NDA.
Trump's campaign has used NDAs to go after several former staffers who have either publicly spoken out against the president or revealed private information about his campaign and administration. The latest is former Trump administration communications aide Cliff Sims, who published a tell-all memoir in January about the White House titled Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House.
"A low level staffer that I hardly knew named Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction," Trump tweeted late last month. "He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer. He signed a nondisclosure agreement. He is a mess!"
"The Trump campaign is preparing to file suit against Cliff Sims for violating our NDA," Michael Glassner, the Trump re-election campaign's chief operating officer, said later that day.
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