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Scaramucci on leaks: 'I'm going to fire everybody'

 
Published July 26, 2017

WASHINGTON — Anthony Scaramucci, President Donald Trump's new communications director, vowed Tuesday to purge the White House staff of disloyal aides in an effort to crack down on leaks, as another member of the press staff resigned from a West Wing reeling from an unfolding shake-up.

"I'm going to fire everybody — that's how," Scaramucci told reporters in the White House driveway, when asked how he planned to identify who had been disclosing information to reporters without authorization and ensure that the leaks stopped. He said he had authority directly from Trump to do so.

"You're either going to stop leaking, or you're going to get fired," he said.

"If I've got to get the thing down to me and Sarah Huckabee, then the leaking will stop," he added, referring to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the newly named press secretary who stepped in after Sean Spicer resigned last week in protest of Scaramucci's hiring.

Michael C. Short, an assistant press secretary who had been close to Spicer, resigned just hours after Scaramucci had been quoted in a news report saying he would be fired, the New York Times report, speaking to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.

His departure marked another setback for Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who populated the West Wing with a group of former RNC aides loyal to him. Those affiliated with the establishment forces of the party are often viewed with suspicion by others in Trump's inner circle.

Both Priebus and Spicer had argued forcefully against bringing on Scaramucci, whose hiring seemed to signal a pivot by the White House toward surrounding Trump with people more likely to stick by the campaign coda of "let Trump be Trump." Trump has long been suspicious of the party committee hires, whose personal loyalty he has repeatedly questioned.

Trump has been plagued since taking office by a leaky White House, where warring factions of aides and advisers have routinely litigated their internal disputes in the press, leading to unflattering disclosures about senior members of Trump's team and the president himself. Scaramucci's threats appeared intended to reassure Trump that he would do something to solve the problem, although there is little evidence that the deep rifts within his inner circle have been resolved.

Scaramucci conceded that the leaking was not confined to the communications operation.

"There are leakers in the comms shop, there are leakers everywhere," Scaramucci said, calling the practice atrocious, outrageous and unpatriotic. "It damages the president personally, it damages the institution of the presidency, and I don't like it."