Trump Gives $155,000 in Holiday Cash Gifts to Four Personal Aides

President Trump gave four of his closest aides cash gifts labeled "cash gift for the holidays" in 2025, according to their annual financial disclosure forms released the week of Sept. 8, 2026: $45,000 each to executive assistant Natalie Harp, communications adviser Margo Martin and deputy Oval Office operations director Chamberlain Harris, and $20,000 to Oval Office Operations Director Walt Nauta, totaling $155,000. The payments come on top of the aides' $150,000 government salaries. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Trump "has a longstanding practice of giving Christmas gifts to people in his orbit, including at times employees and aides."

Federal employees are generally barred from accepting outside compensation tied to their government duties, and ethics observers said gifts of this size from a president to subordinate staff are without precedent. The White House maintains the payments are personal gifts unconnected to official duties and therefore permissible, and noted that while rules bar gifts from subordinates to superiors, they do not bar the reverse.

The gifts, first reported by The Washington Post, drew no announced ethics review as of publication; the White House has publicly defended the arrangement as legal and unrelated to the aides' official duties.