Ex-Trump Campaign Staffer’s Lawsuit Challenges Nondisclosure Agreements

Alva Johnson, a staff member of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, sued the campaign in a Florida federal court on Monday, Ronan Farrow reports in The New Yorker, alleging “that she experienced ‘racial and gender discrimination’ while working for the campaign, that she was paid less than male and white colleagues, and that Trump once kissed her partially on the mouth, without her consent.”

Johnson, who is African-American, had multiple roles on the campaign, including director of outreach and coalitions in Alabama and administrative field-operations director in Florida. In addition to Johnson being paid “substantially less” than white men in similar roles, as the lawsuit alleges, Farrow reports that “campaign staffers made comments about race that made her uncomfortable.”

Four people on the campaign, plus Johnson’s mother, father, and partner, report hearing about the kiss. Two people who were said to be near Trump and Johnson at the time, campaign staffer Karen Giorno and Trump surrogate Pam Bondi, both denied the incident. Bondi told Farrow, “Had it happened, I feel I would have seen it, because I was there the entire time.”

However, the most legally significant part of the case, Farrow suggests, may not be the contentions of discrimination or inappropriate kissing, but “something the complaint does not explicitly address: the pervasive use of nondisclosure agreements by Trump during his campaign and in his administration.”

Johnson had signed an NDA, and Farrow reports hers is “at least the sixth legal case in which Trump campaign or administration employees have defied their nondisclosure agreements.” Three, he observes, were filed the same month. The agreement Johnson signed banned her from exposing information that would be “in any way detrimental to the Company, Mr. Trump, any Family Member, any Trump Company or any Family Member company.” Johnson believes Trump, and his campaign’s, actions were abhorrent enough to justify breaking the NDA.

“We expect that Trump will try to use the unconscionable N.D.A. and forced arbitration agreement to silence Ms. Johnson,” said Johnson’s attorney Hassan Zavareei, Farrow reports. “We will fight this strong-arm tactic.”

Last week, The Daily Beast reported the Trump administration, increasingly paranoid about leaks, is requiring interns to sign nondisclosure agreements. White House counsel, reporter Asawin Suebsaeng wrote, warned interns “that a breach of the NDA—blabbing to the media, for instance—could result in legal, and thus financial, consequences for them.” As Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker reported in The Washington Post last year, Trump, “has long relied on such agreements in his business career” and had continued to do so well into his presidency.”

As Dawsey and Parker point out, while such agreements are common in the business world, NDAs “have not been widely used by past administrations outside the transition time between presidents, in part because most legal experts believe such agreements are not legally enforceable for public employees.”

In Johnson’s case, one unnamed staff member Farrow spoke to accused Johnson of having “an agenda” in response to her wage discrimination claims. As Farrow points out, however, “an analysis by the Boston Globe in June, 2016, found that female staffers on the Trump campaign were paid, on average, three-quarters what their male counterparts received.”

“I am suing because my work holds the same value as the work of my white male counterparts,” Johnson told Farrow, adding, “I am suing because this predatory behavior should not be minimized, especially when committed by the most powerful man in the world.”

Read Farrow’s story here.