President Donald Trump’s longtime executive assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, abruptly resigned from the White House on Thursday, after coming under scrutiny for sharing intimate details about the president’s family with reporters, according to two sources familiar with the move.
In the past six months, Westerhout had tried to expand the boundaries of her job to encompass a broader set of tasks and to include foreign travel, said one adviser close to the White House, who suggested Westerhout had tried to act like a de facto chief of staff. This irked several White House officials and Cabinet secretaries who thought she should stick to her primary task of serving as the president’s personal secretary with a desk just outside the Oval Office.
Westerhout didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times first reported her departure.
The White House was buzzing for most of the day on Thursday about her potential departure — especially after officials learned that she had attended an off-the-record dinner with reporters in Bedminster, N.J., where she was said to have shared overly personal details about the president’s life.
The close White House adviser called this “the final straw” for someone who did not have many allies left in the building.
Many Trump 2016 campaign officials had always been wary of Westerhout, who joined the Trump transition from the Republican National Committee and was not an original Trump loyalist.
By NANCY COOK
Source: politico.com
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