GEN. JOHN KELLY: Hi.
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Hi there, how are you?
JOHN KELLY: Who are you?
FEMALE VOICE: Hi.
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: My assistant.
JOHN KELLY: Could you leave us alone?
FEMALE VOICE: Sure.
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Hi.
JOHN KELLY: I’m only going to stay for a couple of minutes. These are lawyers. We’re going to talk to you about leaving the White House. It’s come to my attention, over the last few months, that there’s been some pretty, in my opinion, significant integrity issues related to you and use of government vehicles and some other issues. And they’ll, they’ll, they’ll walk you through the legal aspects of this. But there is some, from my view, there’s some money issues and other things, but from my view, the integrity issues are very serious. I’m stuck with my past experience and that is, when we hold people accountable in the military, I would, I compare what I see here at the White House and other issues that I’ve had to deal with and say what would I do to this, in this case if I was in the Pentagon dealing with a Marine or a soldier or something like that? And the issue that you may or may not have a full appreciation for, but I think you do, this would be a pretty high level of accountability, meaning a court-martial. We’re not suggesting any legal action here.
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: That I — that I did?
JOHN KELLY: Just stay with me, just stay with me. Yep. That it would be a a pretty serious offense. So with that I’m just going to ask you — these gentlemen will explain it. We’ll bring a personnel person in after after they talk to you. But just to understand that I’d like to see this be a a friendly departure. There are pretty significant legal issues that we hope don’t develop into something that, that’ll make it ugly for you. But I think it’s important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure we can all be, you know, you can look at, look at your time here in, in the White House as a year of service to the nation. And then you can go on without any type of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation. But it’s very, very important I think that you understand that there are some serious legal issues that have been violated. And you’re, you’re open to some legal action that we hope, I think, we can control, right? So with that, if you would stay here with these gentlemen they’ll lay this thing out –
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: Can I ask you a couple questions? Does the president — is the president aware of what’s going on?
JOHN KELLY: Don’t do — let’s not go down the road. This is a non-negotiable discussion.
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN: I don’t want to negotiate. I just, I’ve never talked — had a chance to talk to you General Kelly so if this is my departure I’d like to have at least an opportunity –
JOHN KELLY: No.
OMAROSA: –to understand.
JOHN KELLY: We can, we can talk another time. This has to do with some pretty serious violat — integrity violations. So I’ll let it go at that. So the the staff and everyone on the staff works for me, not the president. And so after your departure I’ll inform him if he gets interested on, on where you may be. So with that I’ll let you go and if gentlemen you could take it.
MALE VOICE: Thanks. Yep. I’m really sorry we’re here.
