White House reporter April Ryan says that former Apprentice winner turned Trump communications official, Omarosa Manigault “physically intimidated her” last week, and told her that the Trump Administration was keeping “dossiers” on reporters, including Ryan and other African-American journalists.
Ryan and Omarosa reportedly got into a verbal altercation just outside of Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s office in the West Wing, over Omarosa’s accusations that Ryan was paid by a surrogate for the Hillary Clinton campaign for positive media coverage during the election.
Ryan denied the accusations and then says Omarosa tried to bully her. “She stood right in my face like she was going to hit me,” Ryan later told American Urban Radio in an interview. “I said, ‘You better back up.’ . . . She thought I would be bullied. I won’t be.”
Omarosa then allegedly told Ryan that the Trump press team had “dossiers” on uncooperative reporters and Ryan was among them. When asked by the Washington Post whether the White House had been keeping files, Omarosa told them only that the story was, “Fake news!”
The two women were friends before the election, when Omarosa, then a Trump surrogate, started to warn Ryan—a big fan of President Barack Obama and who wrote flatteringly about Hillary Clinton’s efforts to court the black community, that she was “ruining her own legacy,” by going in the tank for Clinton’s White House bid.
Outside sources tell Heat Street a confrontation between the two had been brewing for some time. They, reportedly, “kind of hate each other.”
As for allegations that the White House is keeping dossiers on non-compliant media, including reporters for primarily African-American outlets, Kellyanne Conway told CNN‘s Dylan Byers that she has “no clue” what Omarosa was talking about. The White House Press Office has not responded to requests for comment on the subject.
