US President Donald Trump paid personal bonuses totaling $135,000 to three White House aides, including Natalie Harp, who has increasingly been seen accompanying the president, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing administration financial disclosures.

Chamberlain Harris and Margo Martin were also among those who received the payments, according to the report. White House documents reviewed by RIA Novosti showed that the bonuses came on top of the aides' annual salaries of $150,000 each.

The payments have raised questions over whether they could violate federal restrictions on government employees receiving additional compensation from private sources. Richard W. Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told Forbes that the payments appear to constitute supplements to the aides' government salaries.

Former ethics lawyer questions legality of payments

A federal law prohibits federal employees from receiving a "supplementation of salary" from "any source other than the Government of the United States," including "an individual, partnership, association, corporation, or other organization."

Painter said the payments appeared to fall within that prohibition, arguing that they were not ordinary gifts such as an employer taking an employee to dinner or giving them a bottle of wine.

“This is a classic case of supplementation of government salary,” Painter said.

“You can’t have somebody coming into the government and people are writing them private checks to top off their government salary,” Painter said, adding it’s “not allowed, whether it’s the President of the United States or anybody else.”

Painter also pointed to the aides' previous business relationships with Trump as a potential concern. Harp previously worked for Trump's campaign, while other aides had worked for his political action committee.

“you can’t have former employers saying, ‘Well, we’ll top you off while you’re in government.’” Painter said.

Barbara McQuade, a former United States attorney and a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School, also questioned the payments, writing in a post on X that the gifts “violate ethics rules, which exist to promote loyalty to the United States over loyalty to one person.”

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