Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, says the $45,000 President Donald Trump handed to each of three close aides was not a gift at all — he calls it an illegal supplement to their federal salaries, and says it could expose the president to impeachment. Painter made the argument in remarks published on Wednesday, September 9, 2026. The White House rejects it.
Painter told Newsweek that the payments break federal law and that the consequences could reach the president himself: “President Trump could get himself impeached for it.”
That is one lawyer’s opinion — no court has ruled and no proceeding exists. No impeachment resolution has been filed, no congressional inquiry opened, and the Justice Department has taken no action.
What the Disclosure Forms Show
Natalie Harp, executive assistant to the president, reported a “cash gift for the holidays” worth $45,000 from Trump. Communications adviser Margo Martin reported $45,000 in the same words, as did Chamberlain Harris, deputy director of Oval Office operations. Walt Nauta, director of Oval Office operations, listed a “gift for holidays” of $20,000, for a combined $155,000. The Washington Post reported the payments on September 8.
The scale of the money drew attention. Harp, Martin and Harris each earn $150,000 a year, so $45,000 equals 30 percent of an annual salary. Nauta is paid $175,000, putting his $20,000 gift at about 11 percent of his pay.
The administration released the four forms, which cover 2025, this month. Public financial disclosure filers must report gifts from any single source totaling more than $480. The same filings show the aides had earlier been paid by Trump’s transition operation, by Save America or by his 2024 campaign committee.
All three women had worked for Trump well before this administration. Harp joined his political operation in 2022 and earned the nickname “the human printer” during the 2024 campaign for hauling a portable printer and handing him printed articles and social media posts. Martin and Harris both served in the first administration and worked for his political organizations before returning in 2025.
The Law at the Center of It
Painter points to a 1962 law, 18 U.S.C. Section 209, titled “Salary of Government officials and employees payable only by United States.” Executive branch employees, under it, generally may not accept compensation, or a salary supplement, from any source but the federal government in return for their government work.
A Section 209 dispute usually comes down to one question — was the money compensation for government service, or was it provided for some other reason?
A former boss who hands a longtime employee a large sum after that employee joins the government is paying salary rather than giving a present, Painter argues. “Employers and employees don’t have gift-giving relationships,” he told Newsweek. “If your employer gives you $50,000 at the end of the year, that’s not a gift, that is salary.” Both the employee and the payer could be charged, he said, and a five-year statute of limitations would let a future Justice Department revisit the payments.
No one has been charged. The penalties sit in a companion provision, Section 216: a fine or up to a year in prison, rising to five years when the violation is willful, plus civil penalties. The Supreme Court ruled in 1990, in a case over Boeing severance paid to executives leaving for federal jobs, that payments made before recipients became government employees fall outside Section 209.
The White House Pushes Back
A White House statement said: “The President has a 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 gifts at issue here have nothing to do with any of these individuals’ official government duties, and therefore are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards.”
Other specialists land in between. John Ronquillo, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, said the sums were large enough to demand an explanation. “It’s not a trivial amount and so that should raise red flags for a lot of people,” he said, “… who are watchdogs, who are ethics experts in terms of why, why is this happening.”
Two Complaints Land in a Week
Painter’s remarks have not stayed an opinion for long. The Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics on September 10, asking acting director Keith Sonderling to investigate the payments as supplemental salary and refer the matter to the Justice Department if warranted. A day later the Democracy Defenders Fund demanded a criminal investigation, in a letter to the U.S. attorney in Washington and the Justice Department’s public integrity section signed by Painter and Norman Eisen, who held the same ethics post under President Barack Obama. Neither office had responded publicly as of September 17.
What Impeachment Would Require
Impeachment is a political process, not a prosecution. The House can impeach with a simple majority; conviction and removal take two-thirds of the Senate. Republicans hold 218 House seats to the Democratic caucus’ 214, with one independent and two vacancies. Voters decide all 435 seats on November 3.
Trump has faced the process twice already. The House impeached him in December 2019 and again in January 2021, and the Senate acquitted him both times.
Painter now teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School, having held the chief ethics lawyer job from 2005 to 2007. He is vice chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and left the Republican Party in 2018. In 2017 he joined the legal team on a CREW lawsuit accusing Trump of violating the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause. A judge dismissed it for lack of standing that December and an appeals panel revived it in 2019, but the Supreme Court ended the case in January 2021, days after Trump left office, wiping out the lower rulings and ordering it dismissed as moot.