Last year, White House Counsel Don McGahn drew up a nondisclosure agreement for senior staff at President Trump's insistence, even while quietly reassuring aides that the document was practically unenforceable, The New York Times reports. The issuing of an NDA that covers even unclassified and non-confidential White House matters was a first, and it likely could not actually dictate the statements of federal employees were it to be tested, experts say. One former official said he was told that the nondisclosure agreement "was merely meant to reassure the president," the Times writes.
When he was still a private citizen, Trump often used nondisclosure agreements to maintain his and his company's images. By imposing blanket restrictions in the White House, though, he veers into potentially violating the First Amendment, critics argue. "You can't blanket wipe out speech, and you have to show there's a compelling government purpose for doing so," said former President Barack Obama's top ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel's Office, Norm Eisen.
Trump's paranoia evidently stems from concern about "people using information about him in books later on," the Times' Maggie Haberman added on Twitter.
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Apparently no one in the White House takes the document seriously, though. The official who recalled being told the NDA was meant to placate the president added that "no one in the White House thought they were signing away their First Amendment rights," The New York Times writes.
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