Margo Martin, a communications staffer, also reported an identical $45,000 from the same source. So did Chamberlain Harris, deputy director of Oval Office operations. Waltine “Walt” Nauta, director of Oval Office operations, also reported $20,000 as a “Gift for holidays” from Trump.
Harp, Martin and Harris each earn $150,000 a year, according to the White House’s annual report to Congress on staff salaries, so the gift was roughly a third of a year’s pay. Nauta earns $175,000.
Whether any of that broke a law is genuinely contested. One former White House ethics lawyer says it looks like it did. A former government ethics director says it may not. What they’re really arguing about is something that comes up in ordinary workplaces too: When is money from your boss a gift, and when should it be considered part of your pay?
The statute at the center of the argument
The law in question is 18 U.S. Code § 209, which says an executive branch employee can’t take “any contribution to or supplementation of salary” for their government work from any source other than the U.S. government. It affects the person paying too.
Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and a critic of Trump, told The Washington Post the payments appear to cross that line. “He’s clearly trying to make it easier for them financially to work in government service at the White House,” Painter said. “You can’t do that.”
He drew the contrast himself: “It’s not like tipping the doorman on Fifth Avenue. These are U.S. government employees. If you want a job where you get tips, you shouldn’t be working for the U.S. government.”
Don Fox, former acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) under President Barack Obama, read it differently. The available facts don’t show a violation, he told the Post — that would take something like an aide saying they couldn’t live on the salary and Trump topping them up to keep them. He still called the payments “troublesome.” “I would feel somewhere between really uncomfortable and then beholden to the person who gave me such a large gift,” Fox said.
The White House rejects the premise entirely. A White House spokesperson said in a statement that Trump “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.”
The statement added that the gifts “have nothing to do with any of these individuals’ official government duties, and, therefore, are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards.”
No charges have been filed and no court or agency has found a violation.
