Profiles in passivity

Republican senators, freshly returned to Washington after a week and a half on recess, didn’t have much to say about President Donald Trump’s unprecedented use of sweeping non-disclosure agreements pertaining to unclassified information for White House staffers on Wednesday night, most telling reporters they hadn’t considered the issue.

“I just don’t know what to make of that,” said Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker, adding that he hadn’t asked anything similar of his staff: “We’re so boring in our office, no one would want to expose much.”

Trump’s NDAs, intended to prevent his staffers from being publicly critical of him, his family, or his business, were first reported when the Washington Post obtained an early draft of one of the documents this spring. Their existence has since been confirmed by numerous outlets. Most recently, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and Trump himself have alluded to the use of such agreements in their pushback against former administration official-turned antagonist Omarosa Manigault Newman.

As national security and free speech lawyer Mark Zaid points out, the federal government uses NDAs when handling sensitive national security information, but non-disclosure agreements drafted specifically to limit criticism of the president (and his family and his business) are unheard of in government. And as National Review’s Jonah Goldberg argues, the likelihood that these agreements aren’t enforceable may not matter as much as the fact that high-level staffers signed away, in perpetuity, their ability to speak openly about the president.

Still, the issue flew beneath the radar in the Senate on Wednesday, where questions about Manigault Newman’s numerous allegations were overshadowed by the White House’s apparent attempt to flip the script by releasing a three-week-old announcement it had been holding onto for a rainy day.

“I have no clue what that’s about,” Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy candidly answered when asked about the NDAs. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, tied up with various government funding packages over the past few weeks, said he hadn’t thought about the issue. “I don’t know what they’ve done at the White House. You know I’ve never worked down there. But a lot in the private businesses, they have it everywhere—non-disclosure, and confidential stuff and so forth,” he told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “I don’t have it in my office.”

Senator John Kennedy also said he hadn’t asked his staff to sign such an agreement. But, he added, “I’m not going to judge [Trump]. I don’t know.”

Tennessee Republican Bob Corker told reporters an untrusting environment at the White House had everything to do with the use of intimidation tactics such as NDAs. “They’ve brought in a whole different kind of culture over there,” he said.

In Congress, Corker asserted, members often deal with each other in trust. “I know that’s not the case over there. I mean, I’ve had people call me sometimes over there and it sounds like they’re in a coat room or something. The culture is just vastly different, probably, than any administration we’ve seen in modern times.”

Asked whether he thought anything could be done to change that situation, Corker was skeptical.

“I would doubt that,” the retiring senator said.