Diamond and Silk Say They Weren’t Paid by Trump Campaign, FEC Report Says Otherwise

Conservative social media personalities Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, aka Diamond and Silk, said under oath on Thursday that they have never been paid by the Trump campaign.

The pair of outspoken Trump supporters were invited by House Republicans to testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the alleged censorship of conservative voices on social media. Earlier this month, Diamond and Silk received a message from Facebook saying that their videos were deemed “unsafe.” Facebook later said that the message was an error.

Hardaway told Democratic Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee from Texas that Diamond and Silk hadn’t been paid by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, despite Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings which state the opposite.

The FEC report shows that the Trump campaign paid Diamond and Silk $1,275 in November 2016 for “field consulting.” Democratic Rep. Hakeen Jeffries from New York pressed the duo on Thursday about this FEC report and they said that payment was a reimbursement for travel expenses to a Trump campaign event.

“We are familiar with that particular lie, we can see that you do look at fake news,” said Richardson. Again, they doubled down and, contrary to the FEC filings, said they had never been paid for consulting.

The duo’s support for Trump has been well-documented and it’s no surprise that they’ve recently rushed to support Kanye West, who has been the subject of controversy after writing a series of pro-Trump tweets. Diamond and Silk make regular appearances on Fox and Friends, they count Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin as fans of their work, and their Twitter timeline is chock-full of Trump and Fox News retweets.

Read the full FEC filing here.