Trump Settles $10M Dispute With Ex-Aide Accused Of Leaking Staff Gossip

Donald Trump's presidential campaign was investigating whether adviser Sam Nunberg wrote a slew of racially charged Facebook posts.
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Donald Trump has settled a $10 million legal dispute with a former political consultant who he accused of airing dirty laundry about other campaign staffers, the Associated Press reported Friday.

The conflict was first made public in July, when fired campaign advisor Sam Nunberg tried to block arbitration proceedings that Trump had initiated against him for allegedly violating a nondisclosure agreement.

Nunberg, who was fired from the campaign last August over a series of racially charged Facebook posts, said that Trump believed he had leaked information about a tawdry spat between two senior campaign staffers to the media. He responded to Trump’s effort to secure $10 million in damages with a lawsuit in New York state court that accused Trump of retaliating against him for supporting Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the primaries.

The AP reported that the conflict was settled under confidential terms and that attorneys for both parties declined to provide details.

“All I can say it that it was amicably resolved, the whole dispute,” Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, told the AP.

In a court filing responding to the initial arbitration proceedings, Nunberg accused Trump of trying to silence him in order “to cover up media coverage of an apparent affair between senior campaign staffers.” The document referred to a May New York Post story about a public fight between press secretary Hope Hicks and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Lewandowski’s dismissal from the campaign in June came after Trump had started the arbitration proceedings against Nunberg.

At the time, Garten told the AP that the allegations about Hope and Lewandowski’s relationship were “categorically untrue.”

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