Some background first: Scaramucci deleted a tweet where he threatened to call on the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate the leak of his financial disclosure information. He tagged White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus in the tweet, leading many to assume that Preibus was the target of his threat.
Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker then tweeted that he could confirm Scaramucci wanted the FBI to investigate Preibus for leaking.
CNN contacted Scaramucci to get to the bottom of this, and he "took the opportunity and called in" to New Day on Thursday resulting in an a particularly unusual conversation from a high ranking White House official.
Scaramucci said he had spoken to Trump on the phone who he said "has given me his full support and full blessing" and also told him that if CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was "nice to me in this segment, he'll let me come back on the show."
Scaramucci then appeared to read out a statement, blasting leakers inside the White House, saying, "I don't like what they're doing to my friend."
He also addressed tagging Preibus in his now-deleted tweet about leaking, saying, "If Reince wants to explain that he's not a leaker, let him do that."
Scaramucci said that after interviewing most of the assistants to the president, the members of the communications team and White House staffers, he and the president had "a very, very good idea who the leakers are, who the senior leakers are in the White House."
He said that he and the president along with members of his team and law enforcement were working together to "undercut and undercover, or out, if you will, the leakers in the entire country."
"As the president would say in his own words, the White House leakers are small potatoes," Scaramucci said.
He said leaks about Syria, North Korea or Iraq were the types of leaks that were "so treasonous that a 150 years ago, people would have actually been hung for those types of leaks."
He called the leaks coming from the White House "absolutely, completely and totally reprehensible."
"And as you know from the Italian expression, the fish stinks from the head down," Scaramucci told Cuomo. "But I can tell you two fish that don't stink, and that's me and the president. I don't like the activity that's going on in the White House. I don't like what they're doing to my friend. I don't like what they're doing to the President of the United States or their fellow colleagues in the West Wing."
"When I said we are brothers from the podium that's because we're rough — some brothers are like Cain and Abel, other brothers can fight with each other and get along. I don't know if this is reparable or not," he said.
He then said he respected journalists like Lizza for not telling him who the leakers in the White House are because "I understand and respect journalistic integrity."
"However, when I put out a tweet and I put Reince's name in the tweet, they're all making the assumption that it's him because journalists know who the leakers are. So, if Reince wants to explain that he's not a leaker, let him do that."
Cuomo then confronted Scaramucci on his relationship with Preibus, noting that he was against Scaramucci getting hired, and that Scaramucci had suggested that he was a White House leaker.
Scaramucci said that he didn't want to name names, but that he was going to figure out "where the backstabbing is coming from."
"That will lead you to the people who are insecure or under-confident," he said. "If you can't bolster them and make them better, then you have to remove them from the process because then it becomes addition by subtraction."
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/2u1OoQg
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