WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout has resigned from her job, a White House official and another person familiar with the situation told NBC News late Thursday.
One source said that Westerhout left because she had shared personal information about the president’s family and Oval Office operations at an off-the-record dinner with reporters this month near Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The source described her exit as “abrupt.”
News of Westerhout’s departure was first reported by The New York Times.
Westerhout, whose proximity to Trump made her a de facto White House gatekeeper, has been a fixture since the Trump transition in 2016.
Westerhout, who previously had worked as an aide for the Republican National Committee and for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, was present during the earliest days of the Trump administration and helped escort people to and from the gilded elevators in Trump Tower during the transition.
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She was one of six administration officials whom a government watchdog agency found, in November 2018, to have violated the Hatch Act after tweeting support for Republicans or Trump on their government Twitter accounts.
The Office of Special Counsel declined to take disciplinary action against Westerhout and the five other administration officials.
Alba and Jackson reported from Washington, and Edelman from New York.
