Natalie Harp says Donald Trump saved her life by pushing for the Right to Try Act, which led to a treatment for her bone cancer, but experts express doubts about that story

Natalie Harp appears on FOX Business (Facebook)

Natalie Harp has stated publicly that Donald Trump saved her life by pushing for a law leading to treatment that helped her overcome a battle with cancer. Experts in science and bioethics, however, say that probably is not how it happened.

A jointly published article by the The UK Telegraph and Yahoo! News, examines a variety of issues Harp's claim raises. Under the headline "Natalie Harp claims Donald Trump saved her life. Really?" Ben Stockton writes:

Donald Trump's devoted aide Natalie Harp has long told the story about how the president – whom she refers to as "my Good Samaritan" – saved her life.

In June 2019, the then-27-year-old was interviewed on Fox & Friends. She spoke gushingly about the president, suggesting the Right To Try Act, which he had signed into law the year before, had given her access to experimental drugs to treat her bone cancer.

"As I like to say, I'm not dying from cancer any more, thanks to President Trump," she said.

The interview caught the eye of Mr Trump: "She lit up the television screen like very few people I've ever seen," he said during a speech in Washington DC a couple of weeks later.

"She talked about how they were preparing her for death. And because of Right To Try, she's now living."

Harp has become an almost constant presence around the president, earning the nickname "the human printer -- and in the past week, turning into a headline-making news figure. Stockton writes:

Ms Harp, now 35, worked on Mr Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. And since he re-entered the White House in 2025, she has become one of the president's closest staffers, known in Washington as a conduit for getting information to him.

But experts have raised doubts about key elements of the story that first brought her into Trump's orbit.

"The details never made a great deal of sense," Jeremy Snyder, a bioethics professor at Simon Fraser University, said.

He has questioned whether Ms Harp accessed the treatment because of Mr Trump's Right To Try Act, as she and the president have claimed. 

Ms Harp has previously said a medical error led her to be injected with sterile water, which left her "housebound and searching for care."

"Instead of studying my symptoms to diagnose my condition, my Democrat-controlled state and country offered me opioids, barbiturates, medical marijuana, disability, do-not-resuscitate orders, and yes, Death With Dignity," she wrote in a now-deleted LinkedIn post in 2019. 

She developed bone cancer, which she said was not cured by the two chemotherapy treatments available. Doctors apparently told her she would have to wait for other treatments to be approved.

The act became a focal point of Mr Trump's health policy during his first term, and when he signed it into law in May 2018, he said it would give "terminally ill patients the right to try experimental life-saving treatments."

In her LinkedIn post, Harp wrote:

When I failed two available chemotherapies for my rare disease and was denied from clinical trials, my oncologist said I would have to suffer through the symptoms for several more months . . . while awaiting a new round of FDA approvals for the clinical-trial drugs to which I was denied access.

Donald Trump had another option ready: Right to Try. While some may argue this legislation has not benefited the terminally ill or was repetitive to existing law, I beg to differ. My oncologist didn't tell me I had other options; Donald Trump did. So I found another oncologist who was willing to try a different approach -- an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use. Now my numbers are stabilizing and so is my pain. 

 From The Telegraph/Yahoo! report:

Ms Harp suggested she was one of those patients who benefited – an experimental treatment she was prescribed apparently worked and her condition improved.

Two days after that 2019 LinkedIn post, she was invited onto Fox & Friends, where she was spotted by Mr Trump. And a couple of weeks later, during a speech at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority annual conference in Washington   DC he invited her onstage. 

Before the end of the year, according to The Washington Post, she had joined the advisory board of his 2020 campaign.

But Mr Snyder pointed to the fact that Ms Harp had first posted on X (then Twitter) about receiving treatment for her illness in March 2018, two months before Mr Trump signed the Right To Try Act.

She still credited the president with her treatment, who she said was "setting records in speeding up the drug approval process," according to an archived version of the post reviewed by The Telegraph. 

"The chemo I'm on now wasn't approved five years ago," she added. She has not disclosed which drug she was treated with. 

In her later LinkedIn post and public appearances, she appeared to suggest that Mr Trump's Right To Try Act was responsible. 

"You got an experimental treatment because there's Right To Try?" she was asked during an interview with Fox Business. "Yes," she replied. 

For Mr. Snyder, it just does not add up, Blockton writes:

But, Mr Snyder said, "the timeline makes no sense as it's prior to any changes that he [Mr Trump] made."

He first wrote about her story's apparent discrepancies in an article for The Washington Post in November 2019. 

Snyder is not alone in having doubts, Blockton reports:

A year later, Peter Lurie, a former FDA official, wrote in a blog post that Ms Harp's telling of her story has "dubious encounters with the truth".

He pointed to Ms Harp's claim that, according to her LinkedIn post, she had been treated with "an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use."

Mr Trump's Right To Try Act, however, sought to open up access to drugs that had not gone through the FDA approval process. 

"What she said cannot be true," Mr Lurie, who is now the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told The Telegraph.

"It cannot be that -- but for Right To Try -- she would not have had access to this drug. By her own description, if it was approved, she could have had access to the drug, and Right To Try wouldn't have improved her access." 

With deadline looming tomorrow, Trump admin presents no argument that justifies SCOTUS allowing ballroom construction to continue during appeal; the high court's best action is no action at all

Demolition of East Wing of White House (AP, Politico)

On Aug. 14, President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) for an emergency stay that would allow above-ground construction to continue on his White House ballroom while the case is under appeal. As we reported on Aug. 17, that put tight deadlines into play, with any action the high court might take -- including taking no action at all -- set to come by this Friday, Aug. 21. That is the date when the lower appeals court's injunction, forcing a temporary halt to above-ground construction on the East Wing ballroom, is scheduled to take effect.

If SCOTUS takes no action -- and that, in our view, is what it should do -- the temporary injunction stays in place, and the high court (with its Republican majority, including three Trump nominees) likely can do nothing to save the president's pet project. If anyone out there is even slightly inclined to shed a tear for our "Dear Leader," please don't. Here is why: As we showed in our Aug. 17 post, the ballroom project never should have gotten off the ground. That's because two sections of law make it clear that no president, including Trump, has the authority to unilaterally launch a project of such scope. Here is how we explained it, and I will highlight the two provisions of law below:

Congress has delegated limited powers to the president for the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting (including electric power and fixtures) of the Executive Residence at the White House” pursuant to 3 U.S.C. § 105(d). That’s why no one’s suing Trump over the tacky gold shit he keeps stapling to the walls at the White House. But under 40 U.S.C. § 8106, “A building or structure shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.” A gigantic ballroom is obviously a “building or structure,” and Congress has not expressly authorized Trump and pals to build one in President’s Park.

Language cannot be much more clear than that, and there is evidence that Trump knew he did not have authority to demolish the East Wing and build a ballroom in its place, so he put the demolition on a fast track to make it unlikely that anyone could launch a court challenge against the project. That takes Trump's actions from "stupid and unnecessary" to "corrupt and Nixonesque." 

What do we mean by "Nixonesque"? Well, there was a relatively quaint period when many Americans considered Richard Nixon our most corrupt president of modern times, maybe of all time. But we cited a report from the Above the Law (ATL) Legal Website for the proposition that, when it comes to deceit and corruption, Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon look like an amateur. Here is how ATL put it:

This is likely why Trump was cagey about his plans, promising in July of 2025 that any “renovations” would “pay total respect” to the existing structure of the East Wing. Then in October, before anyone could rush into court to stop him, Trump knocked down the entire East Wing and dumped the rubble at East Potomac Golf Course — another target of his “beautification” rampage.

He repeatedly insists that “the desperately needed, and totally secure Ballroom… is a Gift from President Trump and Great Patriots of the United States of America. There will be no expense to the American Taxpayer.” In reality, he’s already grabbed $352 million in funds designated for the Secret Service — more than a tenth of the agency’s budget — to build his ballroom. The New York Times now puts the total cost at $600 million, with more than half of it coming from public money. (So much for the gift.)

I added some of my own analysis, in the unlikely event that the ATL take was not exceptionally clear. (I will highlight the segments below that, in my view, describe the most stomach-churning crookedness on Trump's part):

Let's take a closer look at the material highlighted in yellow above. First, the ATL writers use the term "cagey" to describe Trump's plans for "renovations" at the White House. That is a polite way of saying Trump was sociopathically dishonest, and the writers describe how and why he was dishonest . . . because he knew he had to destroy the East Wing before anyone could go to court to stop him. That suggests Trump knew his actions were unlawful, so he lied to the American people -- the ones, who by virtue of paying taxes, actually own the White House -- in order to get his way.

Second, the ATL writers describe Trump's pledge that his ballroom would come "at no expense to taxpayers," and they state how and why he violated that pledge . . . by essentially stealing one tenth of the Secret Service's budget and applying it to the ballroom while driving up the  project's cost past the $600-million mark. 

We went on to show that Trump's penchant for deceit seems to know zero limitations:

Speaking of soaring costs, Trump originally described the ballroom project as a space for social functions. But now, he describes it mostly as a "military installation." How did that happen? Well, it involves a whole lot more deceit. ATL reports:

In December 2025, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to block construction, arguing the project violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because Trump never secured Congressional approval as required by § 8106. Initially, the Justice Department argued that the APA did not apply, since construction was being run by the Office of the Executive Residence (EXR), rather than the National Park Service (NPS).

EXR’s job is to oversee floral arrangements and canapés at the White House, not major construction. But unlike the National Park Service, EXR is not a federal agency, and so it cannot be held to answer under the APA. Clearly the administration hoped to evade judicial review by parking this illegal construction inside the White House, and at first it actually worked. On February 26, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon denied the Trust’s first motion for preliminary injunction, holding that EXR cannot be sued under the APA. But Judge Leon also laid out a very clear road map for the Trust to get what it wanted.

“Unfortunately for Plaintiff, its challenge fails because the White House office in question is not an ‘agency’ under the APA and because Plaintiff did not bring the ultra vires claim necessary to challenge the President’s statutory authority to complete his construction project with private funds and without congressional approval!” he wrote. Hint, hint.

Five days later, the Trust amended its complaint to add an ultra vires claim, and on March 31, Judge Leon granted their renewed request for an injunction. “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” he wrote. 

Let's return briefly to this point: Why do we say the Supreme Court should take no action and allow the circuit court's injunction to stay in place? Let's consider these words from uscourts.gov, which describes the process for asking the court to issue a writ of certiorari; that is the document by which the high court orders a lower court to send up the case record for review. SCOTUS hears 1% to 1.5% of the petitions for review it receives in a given year, so the chances of a regular American having a case heard before the nation's highest court are roughly nil. What factors does the Supreme Court consider in deciding whether to hear a case. Here is how uscourts.gov puts it:

The Court usually is not under any obligation to hear these cases, and it usually only does so if the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, and/or could have precedential value.

The two controlling sections or law we cited in the third paragraph above were approved by Congress in 1978 and 1912, respectively. That means they have been in place for roughly 48 to 114 years. While the White House itself has national significance, Donald Trump's attempts to unilaterally demolish portions of it are significant only for their brazen corruption. 

In its application for a stay to lift the injunction that stalled ballroom construction, the Trump administration primarily argues that the partially completed structure poses safety risks and that continued construction is needed for national security. It points to nothing of national significance in Trump's efforts to skirt Congress and the courts in his haste to raze a historic structure that he had no authority to destroy. It also points to no conflicting decisions in federal Circuit courts that would apply and no precedent that is at stake. 

In National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States v. National Park Service, et al, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided against the Trump administration primarily on the following grounds, as stated by Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia, writing in the majority:

The White House is the People’s House, and under the Constitution’s Property Clause, Congress exercises plenary control over the building and its surrounding land. The White House is also the centerpiece of President’s Park, a National Park stewarded by the National Park Service. . . .  Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence. The President has no—and claims no—constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people. As the defendant National Park Service has explained, “[t]he White House is owned by the American people and stewarded by the National Park Service. It is more than the President’s residence; it is a site for protests and national discourse about what it means to be American.”

In short, the case at hand was decided on simple tenant-landlord law, which generally is a matter of state law. Trump is a tenant in the White House, and therefore has no authority to demolish the East Wing or make other major revisions to property he does not own.

It's hard to see where there is even a federal question raised by Trump's application, not to mention the issues we described earlier that usually must be present for Supreme Court review. If the high court is to follow its own standards, it should take no action in Trump's application and let the current injunction stand. 

After following a long, winding, and unlawfully blocked road since 2015, files from Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell are set to be unsealed, likely causing some powerful men to sweat

Prince Andrew, with Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell (background) (CNN)

A federal court has ordered the unsealing of files from a lawsuit brought in 2015 by perhaps the best known victim in the Jeffrey Epstein case. The lawsuit, brought by Virginia Giuffre against Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, comes to a conclusion after eight years of litigation from the Miami Herald newspaper, which along with the award-winning work of reporter Julie K. Brown, is largely credited with exposing Epstein's criminal network. 

U.S. Judge Loretta Preska (Southern District of New York), an appointee of George H.W. Bush, ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) supersedes Maxwell's arguments to keep the lawsuit details sealed, a decision that could reveal more evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and their accomplices. A recent report at Yahoo! News came under the headline "Ghislaine Maxwell's desperate bid to hide Jeffrey Epstein files crushed by judge." 

A separate, jointly published report from The New Republic (TNR) and Yahoo! News provides details about the long path the Giuffre lawsuit has traveled. Under the headline "Federal judge orders release of Virginia Giuffre's case files at last," TNR's Hafiz Rashid writes:

Virginia Giuffre's 2015 civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell is going to be unsealed.

A federal court in Manhattan last week ordered the public release of the files from Giuffre's defamation lawsuit against the accomplice and partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following eight years of litigation from the Miami Herald, reported Julie Brown, the investigative journalist for the newspaper best known for uncovering Epstein's crimes.

Maxwell had been fighting to keep the lawsuit details under wraps, but her arguments were not enough to convince U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, who ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act supersedes the grand jury arguments Maxwell cited to keep the records sealed.

Giuffre brought the lawsuit more than a decade ago after Maxwell accused her of lying about being abused by Epstein, Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, and other powerful figures. The lawsuit's discovery process yielded thousands of pages of documents, including depositions of Maxwell, Giuffre, and many others, and Brown was told that it contains more evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and their accomplices. 

The lawsuit took a number of twists and turns over the years, including some questionable actions from the bench, Rashid reports:

The judge in the initial case, Robert Sweet, took the unusual step of sealing all of the documents because they contained "sensitive" and "private" information. He put a protective order on hearings and decisions made in the case as well as volumes of evidence reportedly proving that Epstein and Maxwell were running an underage sex-trafficking ring.

Before any of this could come out in a trial, Maxwell settled the case in 2017, paying Giuffre somewhere between $3 million and $5 million. But now much of the information that could implicate powerful people will soon be made public, and there could be fallout in Washington D.C., New York, and beyond.

The name of U.S. President Donald Trump and related terms reportedly are mentioned more than 38,000 times across more than 5,300 individual documents in the Epstein files. Is Trump one of the powerful figures who could be sweating about possible exposure in the Giuffre files? An answer to that question might unfold over the coming weeks. For now, it could be interesting to see what reaction, if any, Trump and his Department of Justice have to Judge Preska's decision. It also might be interesting to see what actions, if any, they are forced to take as the result of the files' release.

Julie K. Brown provides more insights about Judge Preska's decision in a piece at her "The Epstein Files" Substack page. Under the title "Miami Herald set a landmark legal and journalistic precedent in its fight to unseal the civil lawsuit. What it means," she writes:

Success, finally.

Last week, a federal court in Manhattan ordered the release of the voluminous case files from Virginia’s Giuffre’s 2015 civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell.

The release of these files was in part the result of eight years of litigation by the Miami Herald and its parent company, McClatchy, which have been fighting for the material since I published my series “Perversion of Justice,” in 2018.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Judge Loretta Preska rejected Maxwell’s final arguments to keep the files sealed, noting that the passage last year of the Epstein Files Transparency Act superseded any earlier grand jury arguments that Maxwell was using to keep the records from the public.

What does this mean, and what new information will we learn?

First some history. Virginia brought this defamation lawsuit against Maxwell back in 2015, after Maxwell publicly proclaimed that Virginia was a liar who had made up her allegations of being sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell and other powerful men (including Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the former Prince Andrew.)

Giuffre, represented by the Boies-Schiller firm, sued Maxwell for defamation, asserting that she faced "public ridicule, contempt, and disgrace" when Maxwell went public with her statements. As part of the lawsuit, the lawyers gathered tens of thousands of pages of discovery, including depositions by Giuffre, Maxwell and dozens of other people. Part of the effort also involved Dershowitz, who together with social media influencer Michael Chernovich, tried unsuccessfully to unseal portions of the Giuffre-Maxwell case while it was still being litigated.

The lawsuit was settled in early 2017. I had been told the discovery contained damning evidence against Epstein, Maxwell and other men, and that it was worth trying to get the courts to unseal the documents on the grounds that they were never properly sealed in the first place.

Judicial records by law are supposed to be open to the public. In this case, the former judge (Robert Sweet, now deceased) issued a blanket sealing on all the documents because they contained “sensitive” and “private” information. Sweet placed a protective order on massive amounts of material, including hearings and judicial decisions made in the case — and voluminous evidence that Virginia presented to show that Epstein and Maxwell were operating an underage sex-trafficking operation.

This is not the way sealing is supposed to happen, however. Each document that the lawyers want sealed has to be examined, and those requesting it be sealed must provide legal justification to the judge for doing so. That wasn’t done in this case.

Nearly all the evidence that Virginia’s lawyers uncovered about Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking that came out during this civil case was kept secret.

Maxwell settled the case before it could go to trial, however — and paid Virginia somewhere in the neighborhood of $3-5 million. By settling it, she thought that all the evidence about her involvement would remain under seal.

But I convinced my editors to ask our lawyers to file a motion to intervene in the case in order to unseal the files.

An appeals court eventually ruled in our favor, and on August 9, 2019, thousands of pages were made public, including sworn statements by Virginia in which she alleged she was trafficked to Dershowitz, who represented Epstein; former Prince Andrew; former Maine Sen. George Mitchell; former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin; hotel magnate Tom Pritzker; the late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky. All of the men denied that they were involved with Giuffre.

Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell the following morning.