If you missed Wednesday night’s meltdown, Anthony Scaramucci tweeted that Reince Priebus had leaked a financial disclosure form of Scaramucci’s to the press, and that same was a felony — curious for a Harvard Law School graduate to say such a thing, but he did. The disclosure form is a matter of public record. But what makes this situation even curiouser still is that nothing was leaked to anybody, let alone by Reince Priebus. Politico reporter Lorraine Woellert said that she obtained the financial disclosure form through a routine request to the Export-Import Bank, where Scaramucci worked before being named to his White House post. “My source for @Scaramucci financials was Ex-Im Bank. Period,” she wrote.
So, where’s the beef, Mooch? Clearly Scaramucci went off half cocked on this one and also it’s inferable that he must have a great deal of antagonism towards Reince Priebus since that is exactly whose heart he aimed at, as a knee jerk reaction. Details from The Hill:
“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,” Scaramucci said. “If Reince wants to explain he's not a leaker, let him do that.”
He continued: “But let me tell you about myself. I'm a straight shooter and I'll go right to the heart of the matter.”
Scaramucci painted a picture of a tense relationship with Priebus, likening it to the biblical brothers Cain and Abel. In the book of Genesis, Cain murdered Abel and then lied about his actions to God.
“If you want to talk about the chief of staff, we have had odds, we have had differences,” he said. “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. Other brothers can fight with each other and get along. I don't know if this is repairable or not. That will be up to the president.”
The Priebus-Scaramucci feud goes back a while, at least to the start of the administration when Scaramucci sold his stake in SkyBridge Capital to a Chinese conglomerate and Priebus purportedly used that sale to block Scaramucci from taking a post in the White House Office of Public Liason at that time. Preibus was reportedly livid when he learned that Scaramucci was coming aboard last week but the two decided to put a good face on the situation and claimed that they got along fine with one another. It didn’t take long for that veneer of civility to get torn clean off, now did it?