On Wednesday evening, Politico produced financial records showing that White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci was still involved with investment firm SkyBridge Capital. The document showed Scaramucci is still collecting fat checks from the firm even though it was sold to a Chinese investment group in January, a sale that’s currently under regulatory review.
In the best, most professional way, Scaramucci reacted by both calling the release “a felony” and tweeting out an accusation at White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.
Scaramucci was then reminded that the document Politico was citing was his financial disclosure form. And that maybe, just maybe, the word “disclosure” in that title might suggest that citing the form was not exactly a felony.
Mr. 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.
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.
Which makes the four-alarm fire, all hands on deck, call the FBI, Reince did it post from Scaramucci seem … idiotic. And then, the Mooch went back, deleted the original tweet, denied that he had been accusing Priebus, and said all was good … except for not-so veiled complaints he lumped into a pair of interviews.
And overall it was the most professional messaging operation ever.
In a pre-tweet interview with Fox News, Scaramucci was clear about his disdain for staffers who failed to be at each other’s throats.
“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.”
Then, after the White House Communications Director had demonstrated his front-stabbing prowess by planting one squarely in the White House Chief of Staff, he made a morning appearance on CNN in which he denied that he was accusing Priebus of being a leaker—he was merely implying that Priebus is a leaker.
"When I put out a tweet and I put Reince's name in a tweet, they're all make the assumption that it's him because journalists know who the leakers are," Scaramucci said. "So if Reince wants to explain he's not a leaker, let him do that. But let me tell you about myself. I'm a straight shooter and I'll go right to the heart of the matter."
Stab. Stab. Stabbity-stab. Then Scaramucci hilariously followed up to describe his relationship with Priebus in “brotherly” terms.
“If you want to talk about the chief of staff, we have had odds. We have had differences. When I said we were brothers from the podium, that's because we're rough on each other. Some brothers are like Cain and Abel.”
For what it’s worth, according to Jewish tradition, Cain did not back-stab Abel. He smashed his head in with a rock.
