Scaramucci vows to stop White House leaks and calls leakers 'un-American'
Trump communications chief: ‘I will take dramatic action to stop those leaks’
‘If they want to stay on the staff, they’re going to stop leaking’
Donald Trump’s new communications director has called leakers of confidential White House material “un-American” and promised to take “dramatic action” to stop such information reaching the press.
Two days after his appointment – which prompted the resignation of White House press secretary Sean Spicer – Anthony Scaramucci toured the Sunday news shows.
Brushing off questions about his deletion of tweets expressing views at odds with the president and his publicly stated criticism of Trump in the Republican primaries, he told CBS’s Face the Nation: “[Trump] is the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States. People that are standing around him that are doing that sort of nonsense are actually un-American.
“They’re doing an injustice to the institution of the American presidency. And we’re going to work very hard to change the culture of that.”
On Fox News Sunday, Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier and Republican fundraiser, said: “If we don’t get the leaks stopped, I am a businessperson, and so I will take dramatic action to stop those leaks.”
Scaramucci was answering questions about a report in the Washington Post which cited intelligence intercepts to say departing Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak told superiors he discussed the Trump campaign with Jeff Sessions in meetings in 2016.
Sessions was then an Alabama senator and Trump adviser. Now attorney general, his failure to disclose those meetings immediately led to his recusal from investigations into links between Trump aides and Russia. He has denied that the campaign was discussed.
If you’re going to keep leaking, I’m going to fire everybody. It’s just very binary
Anthony Scaramucci
Trump gave an interview to the New York Times this week, before the Post story was published, in which he was strongly critical of Sessions. The attorney general subsequently said he would serve “as long as is appropriate”.
On CBS, Scaramucci said leakers were “going to get fired. I’m just going to make it very, very clear, OK?
“Tomorrow I’m going to have a staff meeting. And it’s going to be a very binary thing. I’m not going to make any prejudgments about anybody on that staff. If they want to stay on the staff, they’re going to stop leaking.
“If the leaks continue, we are strong as our weakest link. And I’ll say it a little differently in a pun. We’re strong as our weakest leak. So if you guys want to keep leaking, why don’t you guys all get together and make a decision as a team that you’re going to stop leaking?
“But if you’re going to keep leaking, I’m going to fire everybody. It’s just very binary.”
In six months in power, the Trump White House has been bedevilled by leaks. Complaining about them has become the administration line when pushing back against the deepening Russian scandal.
Trump, for instance, has repeatedly accused James Comey, the FBI director he fired in May, of leaking classified information. On Saturday morning, he tweeted: “While all agree the US president has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS.”
Trump, Scaramucci told CBS, “doesn’t like the fact that he has a two-minute conversation in the Oval Office or in his study and that people are running out and leaking”.
In May, Trump was reported to have discussed highly confidential information with Russians including Kislyak, in the Oval Office.
In March, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow publicised a leaked portion of Trump’s tax returns that showed the president in a favourable light. Observers including the recipient of the paperwork, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, suggested that the president could have been the leaker responsible.
