There was a little bit of drama overnight where folks in the MSM accused incoming White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci of asking the FBI to investigate White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for allegedly leaking his financial disclosure forms to Politico. Scaramucci later deleted the tweet below:
Scaramucci: I'm contacting the FBI and Justice Dept. over my leaked financial disclosure form https://t.co/DFyoHRYMzC pic.twitter.com/oZRkRQzSEY
— The Hill (@thehill) July 27, 2017
Scaramucci later tweeted a clarification, saying “Wrong!” to a screenshot of an article on Axios with the headline, “Scaramucci appears to want Priebus investigated by FBI”:
Wrong! Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks. @Reince45 pic.twitter.com/AB0reseuX1
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 27, 2017
Scaramucci was reacting to an article in Politico titled, “Scaramucci still stands to profit from SkyBridge from the White House” which included his financial disclosure form. Lorraine Woellert, who wrote the piece, later confirmed that she obtained the “publicly available” document from the Export-Import Bank where Scaramucci had been working before moving to the White House:
Wow, sorry I slept through all the fun! FWIW, Mr @Scaramucci's Form 278e is publicly available from ExIm. Just ask. https://t.co/Io2ed5IEuj
— Lorraine (@Woellert) July 27, 2017
In a text message to the New York Times, it appears Scaramucci wasn’t aware that his form was already available:
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Mr. Scaramucci’s report says it was filed on June 23, which means it could be publicly released by the bank on July 23, or last Sunday. Politico did not indicate whether it obtained the report through such a regular request.
Asked why he thought the report had been leaked illegally, Mr. Scaramucci responded by text: “They aren’t in process yet.” But when told his form could be released on July 23, he did not respond further.
However, despite Scaramucci’s denial, Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post are reporting that Priebus is the target:
In case there's any ambiguity in his tweet I can confirm that Scaramucci wants the FBI to investigate Reince for leaking.
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) July 27, 2017
Some in White House are trying to build a case that Priebus is a leaker — “a diagram” charting leaks, per senior official — to show Trump.
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) July 27, 2017
Tensions between Scaramucci and Priebus are raw as ever, I’m told tonight. There’s a reason Mooch tagged Reince on FBI leak tweet.
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) July 27, 2017
Scaramucci also appeared on “Hannity” last night and spoke of getting the leakers to stop, by firings if necessary:
Scaramucci on White House leaks: 'We're going to let people go if we have to' https://t.co/9UpXcuFLhJ via @foxnewspolitics pic.twitter.com/QVQkvI61fB
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 27, 2017
After his appearance, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores issued the following statement, via Fox News:
“We have seen an astonishing increase in the number of leaks of classified national security information in recent months. We agree with Anthony that these staggering number of leaks are undermining the ability of our government to function and to protect this country. 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.”
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