It's "unheard of" for anyone to bring a recording device into the White House Situation Room or to record conversations with the president or the chief of staff like former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman says she did, Rep. Pete King said Monday.
"Any time I go to the Trump White House, the Situation Room, you just walk into the Cabinet room for a meeting at all, you have to turn in your cell phone beforehand," the New York Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"I don't know of anyone who used a recording device in the Situation Room."
Manigault-Newman on Monday released a tape of her talking to President Donald Trump, with him showing surprise that chief of staff John Kelly fired her. In another tape released over the weekend, she recorded Kelly telling her he hoped for her "friendly departure." She also warned Monday that she has further recordings from the White House.
King said that he did not know Manigault-Newman very well, but always found her to be the "most dedicated pro-Trump person you could meet."
"She revered the president," said King. "Either she is a total hypocrite, or it was delusional. I don't know what it was. You couldn't have asked anyone to be more of a cheerleader publicly and privately for President Trump than Omarosa."
King, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the tapes prove White House security must be tightened.
"To go into the Situation Room, I would think they should have some kind of detection or something," he said. "I guess you can't be frisking every cabinet official, there has to be some way they can find a way to detect this, because Omarosa was harmless. You could have somebody who knows what they're doing."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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