Trump official Lynne Patton confirms she sought ethics guidance on appearing in a TV series
A former longtime aide to the Trump family who is now a senior official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development confirmed in a Facebook post Friday that she recently sought permission to appear on a reality-style television show.
Lynne Patton, who oversees federal housing assistance programs in New York and New Jersey, posted on Facebook that she was "feeling betrayed" after the details of her October 2018 memo were published Friday by The Washington Post. The memo, she confirmed, was intended to seek advice from administration ethics officials on potential "monetary restrictions of a second federal income."
"This is not about money," Patton wrote in her online post. "I could make 10 times the amount writing a book about a fraction of what I know. This is about me honoring my commitment to the American people. If producers are truly interested, they’ll figure out a way to make it work without me having to compromise my own principled mission.”
She added the hashtag: #ComingSoonToNetflixOrBravo
Patton is a longtime Trump supporter who is widely known for seeking publicity. She recently invited reporters and photographers to follow her stay in public housing projects in New York to draw attention to what she said were deplorable conditions.
On Wednesday, Patton stood behind Republican Rep. Mark Meadows at the televised hearing with Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen while Meadows pressed Cohen on allegations that President Donald Trump is racist.
"She says that as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way that she would work for an individual who was racist," said Meadows.
According to the Post, Patton asked in her October 2018 memo whether she would be permitted to attend Trump 2020 campaign rallies and who would be allowed to cover her travel expenses.
Patton also asked whether she would be permitted to have dinner with HUD Secretary Ben Carson, members of the Trump family or high-ranking officials like White House counselor Kellyanne Conway as part of the show.
The show would center on a group of "powerful black women," the Post reported.
In her statement Friday, Patton said she was first approached in December 2016 to appear in a documentary-style series similar to Showtime's "The Circus." But she turned it down, she said, "because my priority was serving the American people at the request of the President-Elect." She said two years later the same production company "implored me to reconsider," prompting her to seek ethics guidance from HUD.
HUD has not publicly released the memo.
