Omarosa Threatens To “Blow The Whistle” On Alleged Trump Corruption During Wild ‘Today’ Interview

This morning, former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman visited Today, and she had plenty of negative things to say about Donald Trump and his chief of staff John Kelly. Omarosa first released a tape of her post-firing conversation with Trump in which he says that “nobody even told [him] about it.” Later, during a contentious interview with Savannah Guthrie, the former Apprentice star insisted that the president is either lying or “being puppeted” by Kelly, accused the White House of “false imprisonment,” and promised that she’s going to bring their crimes to light.

Omarosa told Guthrie that when Kelly fired her, he locked her in the Situation Room and denied her the ability to leave or to contact a lawyer. Trump wasn’t in the room when she was fired, but when he spoke with Omarosa afterwards, he said, “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that. Goddamn it. I don’t love you leaving at all.” Omarosa believes that Trump’s lack of knowledge is concerning. “Is General Kelly running this country, or is the president running this country?” she asked Guthrie. “Because he said he didn’t know, and ‘they’ run a big operation. Who is the ‘they’ on the tape? … Is General Kelly puppeting Donald Trump?”

The Apprentice star refused to say how specifically she taped Kelly in the Situation Room, but she insisted that his behavior was completely “unacceptable.” Said Omarosa, “It’s not acceptable for four men to take a woman into the room and tell her that she can’t leave … The moment I said, ‘I would like to leave,’ and they said I can’t go, it became false imprisonment.”

Omarosa then told Guthrie that Kelly and his White House associates should “be concerned,” saying, “There’s a lot of very corrupt things that are happening in the White House, and I am going to blow the whistle on a lot of this.”

Omarosa promised that she has other tapes of these kinds of “corrupt” conversations, and she’s willing to use them: yesterday, she released the tape of Kelly firing her in the Situation Room on Meet the Press, and last week, she revealed that a tape exists of Trump repeatedly saying the N-word on the set of The Apprentice. She says that she doesn’t have the N-word tape (she’s only heard it), but we have to imagine that it’s just a matter of time before she gets her hands on it.

In response to Omarosa’s Today interview, Trump tweeted that “Wacky Omarosa” begged him for a job, but “people in the White House hated her.” That may or may not have been true at the time, but it’s certainly true now.