Omarosa sees anonymous NYT op-ed as ‘very similar’ to Pence staff style

Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman said on Friday that the recent anonymous New York Times op-ed blasting President Trump reads like documents she saw come out of Vice President Pence’s office. 

“I’ve never hidden my suspicion about the vice president’s operation in the White House,” Manigault Newman told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on “Rising.” 

“I went back through my emails and some of the documents that came out of the vice president’s office, and I have to tell you that this op-ed is very similar to the style and communication that comes out of his shop,” she continued. 

Manigault Newman, who left the White House last December and wrote a memoir titled “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House” that made a number of startling claims about her time there, added that she does not believe that Pence himself drafted the piece. 

“I believe that his staff — I think his office might be trying to protect him, but with the ultimate goal of him becoming president of the United States,” she said. 

“The clue is in the op-ed, when it says, ‘no matter how this will end,’ meaning they’re anticipating that it may end in impeachment, it may end in him not being reelected, but it gives clues in that particular line for me,” she continued.

Omarosa first made the claim during an interview on Thursday.

Speculation about who wrote the anonymous op-ed published by The New York Times has landed on a number of Trump administration officials. The Times only described the author, who wrote about attempting to “thwart” some of Trump’s decisions from within the administration, as a “senior” official.

A spokesman for Pence’s office denied his office was behind the op-ed. 

“The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds. The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed. Our office is above such amateur acts,” Jarrod Agen, Pence’s deputy chief of staff and communications director, said in a tweet. 

— Julia Manchester