The Trump transition team declined to make Harp available for an interview.

‘Trusted and valued’

Trump has dismissed concerns about Harp, whom he calls “sweetie” and treats like a daughter, according to people close to him. They say he appreciates Harp in part because she was among the few aides working for him when he was still something of a political outcast, after he was voted out of office and after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, said Harp was “trusted and valued” and credited her “work ethic and dedication” for helping Trump win the election.

In response to a request for comment for this article, the Trump campaign also asked several allies to provide character references. Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) described Harp as professional and dedicated. Representative Ronny Jackson (Republicann-Texas) said she had a “bubbly, outgoing attitude” that helped keep Trump in high spirits.

But her direct relationship with Trump means that she has often operated largely outside the supervision of more senior aides, a situation that has at times raised alarm among some members of his inner circle who would like to see tighter control of what information he is receiving. When people seeking influence with Trump want to turn him against their rivals, they send damaging clips to Harp, knowing she will pass them along, unvetted.

She is omnipresent in images of Trump on the campaign trail and in the days since he won the election. A Trump campaign documentary produced by Tucker Carlson showed Harp stationed next to Trump, taking dictation for Truth Social posts.

When Trump sent angry text messages to billionaire donor Miriam Adelson over the summer, it was Harp who pressed send, according to two people with knowledge of the incident. The texts almost cost Trump the support of one of his party’s biggest donors, before intermediaries worked to repair the relationship.

Harp provided Trump an article that had an illustration of him wielding a baseball bat next to the head of Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who was on the verge of indicting him. Trump quickly posted it to social media but deleted it after his lawyers pleaded with him to do so.

She was by Trump’s side at Mar-a-Lago, taking dictation for his social media diatribe of more than 40 posts against E. Jean Carroll, whom he had been found liable for sexually abusing. Other Trump aides who were not at the Palm Beach, Florida, club at the time were helpless to stop him.

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The most recent incident was a sign of the higher stakes as Trump returns to the White House. Harp posted what was supposed to be a private message to Trump from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for all to see, soon before the two leaders met in person for the first time in five years.

‘I want to bring you joy’

Harp, a devout Christian who grew up in California, first caught the attention of Trump in 2019 when she appeared on Fox News and credited him with saving her life.

She had bone cancer, she said, and legislation that Trump signed in 2018, the Right to Try law, saved her by giving her access to experimental treatments. It is unclear what drugs she was referring to.

Trump loved the story and invited her to speak on his behalf at the 2020 Republican National Convention. She joined his staff in 2022, after leaving her job as an anchor at the far-right One America News Network, where she further endeared herself to Trump by endorsing his baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen.

Trump once remarked, while angry after his arraignment in Fulton County, Georgia, in 2023, that Harp was the only member of his staff who cared about him, according to two people familiar with the comment.

In 2023, Harp sent a series of letters to Trump that unnerved people around him, according to a half-dozen people with knowledge of them.

“You are all that matters to me,” she wrote in one of the letters, which were seen by The New York Times. The letters’ authenticity was confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of them.

“I don’t ever want to let you down,” Harp wrote, thanking Trump for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life”.

In another letter, she told Trump that she wanted to get back to “that synergy” she used to have with him, where “we’d talk about everything and nothing”.

“I want to bring you joy,” she wrote, “to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work’.”

At the White House, Harp is likely to serve a role unlike any presidential adviser in modern history.

While the incoming staff secretary, Will Scharf, will be tasked with managing the paper flow in and out of the president’s office, those who have worked closely with Trump know that as long as Harp is around there will inevitably be an entirely separate stream of information to his desk.

That is a change from Trump’s first four years in office, when staff members who controlled his social media feed usually alerted higher-ups of potentially problematic posts, like dismissals of significant advisers.

Harp, by contrast, has mostly run her own program.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.