Trump’s 2016 Campaign Settles Nondisclosure-Agreement Fight

Zoe Tillman
·3 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign has reached a settlement in a long-running fight over its nondisclosure agreements that would free potentially hundreds of ex-staffers, contractors and volunteers to say what they want to about their experience.

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The settlement comes after years of litigation between the 2016 campaign and former staffer Jessica Denson, who won a ruling in 2021 that the nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements she signed were unenforceable. Denson and her lawyers were trying to certify the case as a class action for at least 422 people the campaign had identified as signing identical contracts.

The case only dealt with the 2016 campaign, but court decisions over the years would have served as a warning for similarly broad confidentiality agreements. A federal judge in Manhattan held that the language in the Trump campaign agreements, which restricted what staffers could say about Trump, his family and his businesses, were too vague, ill-defined and “unduly burdensome.”

Settlement of the lawsuit, which was disclosed in a court filing Friday, is subject to final approval by a judge. The parties had been in court-supervised negotiations in recent months.

While the campaign’s agreements ultimately weren’t legally enforceable, they had served for years as a “mechanism of fear and a very ominous threat” to the people who signed them, Denson said by telephone Friday.

“It is hugely significant in restoring to these individuals — who should have never been silenced — the freedom to speak the truth to the American people,” she said.

Trump’s lawyers Jared Blumetti and Patrick McPartland didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cash Payments

Under the agreement, the campaign will make cash payments to Denson and her lawyers, but the figures were redacted in the court filing. She’s been represented by the private law firms Bowles & Johnson and Ballard Spahr, and by the nonprofit advocacy group Protect Democracy.

The litigation dates back to late 2017, when Denson filed a lawsuit in state court in New York claiming she faced discrimination and harassment from other members of Trump’s campaign staff. Denson had worked as a national phone bank administrator and was later promoted to organize Hispanic outreach.

The campaign took Denson to arbitration, saying that her state court case violated the terms of her nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements. After years of arbitration and state and federal court litigation, US District Judge Paul Gardephe ruled in 2021 that the agreements were invalid, opening the door to Denson pressing a potential class action on behalf of 2016 campaign workers and volunteers.

The campaign disclosed in court last summer that it had notified all former 2016 staffers that they were released from these agreements, and argued that move made Denson’s case moot. They also argued that if the case wasn’t moot, certifying a class still wasn’t appropriate because the contracts that campaign workers signed contained clauses requiring arbitration.

Denson’s lawyers maintained that there was still an active case because the campaign’s representations to the court about its decision to no longer enforce the nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements wasn’t legally binding.

The case is Denson v. Donald J. Trump for President, 20-cv-4737, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

(Updates with comment from Jessica Denson, information about settlement.)

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