Two letters that White House aide Natalie Harp is said to have written to President Donald Trump in 2023 were published in full for the first time on August 20, 2026, offering an unfiltered look at the devotion of the assistant who has become gatekeeper to the 80-year-old president.
“You are all that matters to me,” she wrote in one of the notes, telling Trump that she never wanted to let him down. Elsewhere she called herself unworthy of him and described him as her guardian and protector.
Harp, 35, holds the title of special assistant and executive assistant to the president. She works at a desk outside the Oval Office, is widely described as Trump’s gatekeeper and earns $150,000 a year. She holds a college diploma and a master’s degree.
The Scotland and Ireland Letters
Both notes appear to have been written during or just after a May 2023 trip Trump took to his golf properties in Aberdeen and Turnberry, Scotland, and Doonbeg, Ireland. Harp was 31 at the time; Trump was 76. She was photographed stepping off Trump Force One in Aberdeen and again on the course at Turnberry.
The first letter is an apology, and an oddly granular one. Harp says sorry for walking on one of the courses instead of riding in a cart, for phoning Trump and for failing to answer his texts fast enough, blaming part of the delay on a man identified only as John. The second reads as apology, diary entry, thank-you note and love letter at once. In it, she confesses envy of women whose jobs seem to consist of talking with Trump and looking attractive, declares that she wants that job, and says she misses the calls when the two would talk about anything and nothing at all. Work, she insists, should not be the only subject between them.
She also refers to herself by the nickname Trump’s staff gave her, the Human Printer, a nod to the favorable news stories and reports she printed and carried to him. Each note is a printout, folded over, and carries what looks like her signature. The scattered capital letters and loose grammar echo Trump’s own posting style; Harp is said to have access to his Truth Social account.
Slate writer Heather Schwedel, who went through the letters line by line, concluded that the many media accounts portraying Harp as alarmingly fixated on Trump had not overstated the case at all.
How the Notes Surfaced
The letters reached author Michael Wolff while he was reporting “All or Nothing,” his best-selling account of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Extracts appeared in the book, and shorter passages later ran in The New York Times. Wolff, who discussed the documents on the latest episode of his podcast “Inside Trump’s Head” with co-host Joanna Coles, said the notes came from campaign sources unnerved by how close Harp was getting to the candidate.
By Wolff’s account, staff members found the letters buried in the piles of printouts Harp delivered, photographed them and passed the images around the campaign. He said aides believed Trump was spending too much time with her and that her growing influence rested on no relevant experience. The relationship, Wolff said, was not one that belonged in a professional setting. Pressed on the provenance of the documents, he said he knows who handed them over and considers the source extremely reliable.
Verification remains limited. The letters have not been authenticated by anyone beyond Wolff, although Times reporters have said they saw letters containing matching language. It has not been independently confirmed that Harp sent them.
Questions About Access and Security
The publication lands in the middle of a broader argument about how much power a little-known assistant has accumulated. Harp has become a channel for foreign leaders trying to reach the president. It emerged on Wednesday that she declined to undergo a background check for a year.
Her proximity was on stark display in July 2026, when Trump slipped away from Air Force One in a catering truck in Turkey and flew out on a secret aircraft to evade an apparent Iranian plot to target the presidential plane. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, staff and a plane full of journalists remained on board to serve as decoys. Harp was among the handful of people who went with the president.
David Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, called the situation a deadly serious issue on Thursday.
The story caught fire politically after Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, needled Trump on Sunday for caring mainly about “traveling with Natalie,” a line that prompted a meltdown among Trump’s supporters and set off a weeklong news cycle centered on Harp. Trump and Harp were photographed leaving Marine One together on Sunday.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle defended her as a loyal and hardworking member of Trump’s staff and accused the press of recycling anti-Trump talking points instead of covering real news. He also turned his fire on Ossoff, dismissing the senator’s rhetoric as cringeworthy while calling his voting record dangerous.
None of that has quieted the central question raised by the letters: how an aide who was 31 when she apologized in writing over golf-cart etiquette became, by the summer of 2026, the person standing closest to the president in a national security emergency.