Wow. President Trump sure has a thing for nondisclosure agreements, doesn’t he?

No, this isn’t about his porn star mistress. This is about the other morally compromised individuals in his orbit.

The Washington Post is reporting that senior Trump administration staffers have been required to sign NDAs that didn’t just cover his time as president, but would extend beyond his term.

One person who signed the agreement said it was similar to those signed during the campaign and transition.

“I remember the president saying, ‘Has everybody signed a confidentiality agreement like they did during the campaign or we had at Trump Tower?’ ” the individual told the Post.

In an agreement that has been called “extraordinary,” a draft notes a $10 million penalty for those who broke the agreement (to be paid to the federal government).

With that in mind, it’s no wonder staffers balked at the notion of signing it.

It was then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and White House counsel who leaned on them and got them to sign.

In defining what the NDA covered:

That information was defined as “all nonpublic information I learn of or gain access to in the course of my official duties in the service of the United States Government on White House staff,” including “communications … with members of the press” and “with employees of federal, state, and local governments.”

The Post noted that the $10 million penalty was likely lowered in the final agreements, as other sources did not recall the same figure.

The agreement even blocked “works of fiction,” so if a former staffer wanted to write a political thriller about a coup of our government, by a hostile foreign power, using internet psy-ops to create a dystopian society of mindless followers, then they can’t write that book.

Or if they wanted to create a comedic screenplay about a slow-witted charlatan, in debt to the Russian mob, being mistaken for a world leader, and the hilarity that follows, as he bumbles his way through “leading,” then they can’t do that, either.

These NDAs are likely unenforceable, at least once Trump’s term is done, and likely began out of the frustration over all the leaks in the early days of the administration.

*UPDATE*

After news of these NDAs broke on Sunday, the ACLU made a statement:

ACLU statement: “Public employees can’t be gagged by private agreements. These so-called NDAs are unconstitutional and unenforceable.”

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 19, 2018

Now the question is, were senior staffers asked to sign NDAs?

As of this morning, no one is willing to say definitively that this report is untrue. I’d say their hesitation means that they were, in fact, asked to sign NDAs.

So we may get that book or that screenplay, after all.