This type of agreement is not enforceable https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/trumps-nondisclosure-agreements-for-federal-employees-are-authoritarian-and-unenforceable.html
These agreements are, in all likelihood, legally deficient in a fairly elementary way. Absent consideration (i.e., the thing received by contracting parties in exchange for their agreement to perform/remain silent/forego rights), any nondisclosure agreement would in all likelihood be deemed invalid. Any nondisclosure agreement entered into by a federal employee owing civil damages to any person, let alone the president, also begs the appalling question of what consideration those employees could possibly have received separate and apart from their salaries, which are statutorily prescribed and reported annually to Congress. If they did receive some benefit apart from their salaries—or if the job, and thus the salary, itself was contingent upon signing the agreement—it would be worth contemplating what laws such an arrangement might violate.
The far stronger likelihood is that consideration isn’t present here, rendering these alleged agreements little more than a bullying, speech-chilling, calculated bluff. Marcus cites a draft agreement that makes penalties payable to the federal government (as opposed to Trump personally), but it’s difficult to imagine how that bit of drafting slipperiness would matter, except to attempt to obfuscate that Trump is the real party to the agreement and federal employees are obligees. According to Marcus, some who were reluctant to sign ultimately did so because they figured they were unenforceable anyway. Barring some dark authoritarian turn in our other branches of government, these employees were absolutely correct about this last part.
These alleged nondisclosure agreements represent an attempt to purchase the free speech rights of federal employees for the sake of Trump’s personal protection, paid with only an empty, but perhaps effective, threat. To say such a threat cheapens the presidency grossly understates the constitutional repugnancy of these agreements. This effort reveals the president’s view of himself as an autocratic leader and of his place within the American system as being above it. It further demonstrates his blithering ignorance and disdain for even the simplest and purest of American concepts like free speech and public service.
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