Trump's $45,000 Christmas Gifts to Aides Surface as Media Firestorm Over Natalie Harp Rolls On

President Trump gave $45,000 cash Christmas gifts each to three White House aides last year, according to annual financial disclosure forms the administration published last week. Executive assistant Natalie Harp, communications adviser Margo Martin and deputy Oval Office operations director Chamberlain Harris each received $45,000, while Oval Office operations director Walt Nauta got $20,000, according to the Associated Press.

The forms label the money as a "cash gift for holidays." Harp, Martin and Harris are paid $150,000 a year; Nauta earns $175,000, per the White House's salary disclosure to Congress.

A White House spokesperson told CBS News the gifts reflect Trump's "longstanding practice of giving Christmas gifts to people in his orbit, including at times employees and aides, both in government and in his time in the private sector." The spokesperson said the money has "nothing to do with any of these individuals' official government duties, and, therefore, are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards." No ethics complaint or investigation into the gifts has been announced.

There's a discrepancy in how the story broke. CBS News reported the gifts were "first reported by Politico." The Associated Press wire version, carried by MS NOW, CTV News and MyNorthwest, says the disclosures were "first reported earlier on Tuesday by The Washington Post." Both can't be the original story; readers should treat the underlying disclosure documents, not either outlet's claim to the scoop, as the actual source.

Nauta's history adds context. He and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira were charged in 2023 alongside Trump with conspiring to obstruct the FBI's classified documents investigation. Those charges were dismissed in 2024, according to the AP. Harris, meanwhile, sits on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal body that reviews Washington construction projects including the White House ballroom Trump is building. A factual overlap exists between his appointment and the gift, though no source alleges any impropriety.

The Harp Firestorm, Separately

The gift disclosures landed in the middle of an already-boiling story about Harp that started weeks earlier. At an Atlanta rally last month, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said Trump "doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar."

The line went viral. Google searches for Harp spiked roughly 5,000%, and a CNN explainer titled "Who is Natalie Harp" became the network's most-read story one day this week, according to CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, as cited by the Daily Signal.

Critics accused Ossoff of insinuating an affair between the 35-year-old aide and the 80-year-old president without evidence. Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKool called it "the definition of a sexist cheap shot," and Fox host Megyn Kelly said it was "despicable" to attack "a 35-year-old cancer survivor as a possible affair partner" with "absolutely nothing to back that up." Democratic strategist David Axelrod, no Trump ally, also criticized Ossoff on X, calling the phrase "with Natalie" in an otherwise sharp speech "gratuitous and unnecessary."

Ossoff has partly walked back the insinuation but not the underlying argument. On MS NOW's "The Last Word," he told host Lawrence O'Donnell that Harp and other senior aides are "adults, public officials paid by the taxpayers, with immense power in positions of public trust," and lumped her in with claims that Peter Navarro steered taxpayer-funded loans to Trump family investments and that Pete Hegseth was mismanaging Middle East policy. "No one cares about their feelings," Ossoff said. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Signal.

Harp's supporters, including former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, describe her as "one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides" on Trump's team, according to Forbes. Harp has publicly discussed surviving Stage 2 bone cancer and has credited access to an off-label immunotherapy, made possible by the 2018 Right to Try Act, with saving her life, according to the Daily Wire, which also reported her father died by suicide in 2020 and that she is estranged from her brother.

Coverage Volume Under Scrutiny

Fox News, citing Grabien transcripts and NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck, reported that Harp was mentioned 308 times on CNN and 344 times on MS NOW over one recent seven-day stretch, with mentions climbing past 318 and 400 respectively the following week. CNN has reported Harp lacks a security clearance despite her access to Trump, resurfaced her January 6 social media posts, and—citing unnamed sources—reported she once rode in an SUV trunk to get to a 2023 Trump court appearance. CNN also aired an interview with Harp's estranged brother, Preston Harp, drawing backlash from conservative critics.

The White House separately criticized CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes for asking Trump about Ossoff's remark. CNN defended Holmes, calling the attacks "beneath the office."

Neither the gift disclosures nor the Ossoff dust-up has triggered a formal ethics inquiry as of this writing. Ossoff is up for re-election in Georgia in 2026, putting both controversies squarely inside an active Senate campaign where his opponents have seized on the episode as a political liability.