In the five days since he was named White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci has vowed to hunt down leakers and fire anyone he catches. By the end of his fifth day, he was on the receiving end of what he called a leak about himself.
The financial disclosure form that Scaramucci filed with the government appeared on Politico’s website Wednesday night, showing that he has assets worth as much as $85 million. He made $5 million in salary and another $4.9 million from his ownership stake in his investment firm SkyBridge Capital in the first six months of this year, according to the filing.
Scaramucci responded angrily. “In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony,” he wrote on Twitter, “I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept.” He added the hashtag #swamp, reflecting President Donald Trump’s promise to drain the swamp and then included the Twitter handle of Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, who had opposed Scaramucci’s appointment last week. The serrated-edge response was similar to something his new boss might do, but it rippled through the White House, with several staff members expressing astonishment at the public outburst. Given Scaramucci’s tough language about leakers, and his decision to push out one assistant press secretary, his tweet added to a sense of foreboding that had taken hold in the White House.
Some fellow administration officials interpreted Scaramucci’s use of Priebus’s handle on the tweet as a sign that he was blaming the chief of staff. Priebus has insisted publicly that he and Scaramucci are friends, but other aides have said Priebus urged Trump not to bring Scaramucci to the White House and was overruled. Asked by text Wednesday night whether he was blaming Priebus for the release of the financial disclosure form, Scaramucci did not respond, although he did respond to another question. Still, it was not clear that it was actually a leak in the first place, much less an illegal one. Scaramucci filed the disclosure form in connection with his previous, short-lived job with the Trump administration at the Export-Import Bank. Under federal law, anyone can request such a report on a government website 30 days after its receipt.
Scaramucci’s report says it was filed June 23rd, which means it could be publicly released by the bank July 23rd, or last Sunday. Politico did not indicate whether it had obtained the report through such a regular request. Asked why he thought the report had been leaked illegally, Scaramucci responded by text: “They aren’t in process yet.” But when told his form could be released July 23rd, he did not respond further. In an interview on Fox News earlier in the day, Scaramucci complained about leaks and Washington’s backstabbing culture. “What I don’t like about Washington is people do not let you know how they feel,” he said. “They’re very nice to your face and then they take a shiv or a machete and they stab it in your back. I don’t like it. I’m a Wall Street guy, and I’m more of a front-stabbing person, and I’d rather tell people directly how I feel about them than this sort of nonsense.”
He added that he expected Attorney General Jeff Sessions to announce an investigation into intelligence leaks within days. “If there are senior people inside the administration who are trying to get them to leak information on each other, we’re getting that to stop right now because that does not serve the president,” Scaramucci said in the Fox interview. The Justice Department issued a statement saying that it agreed. “We have seen an astonishing increase in the number of leaks of classified national security information in recent months,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, the department spokeswoman. “We agree with Anthony that these staggering number of leaks are undermining the ability of our government to function and to protect this country,” she added. “Like the attorney general has said, ‘whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail,’ and we will aggressively pursue leak cases wherever they may lead.”
New York Times