The Lies from This White House Flow Freely

The guy at the top sets the tone. It's no wonder we have Scaramucci - the acme of ignorance, mendacity and lack of class. He kept hiring sleazeballs until he found one that mirrors himself.

White House staffers aren’t supposed to just call up the Justice Department or FBI and complain about a personal grievance. Yet that is exactly what newly-minted Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claimed to have done during a combative Thursday morning CNN interview.

[...]

“You know why I like bringing up the Department of Justice and the FBI?” Scaramucci said. “Because people who’ve done something wrong, it makes ‘em nervous.”

The White House must be a jumble of nerves at this point.

These comments came hours after Scaramucci offered an expletive-filled rant to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza about how he believed his rival, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, was behind the latest leak, and that he’d “called the FBI and the Department of Justice” about this “felony.”

Which we already know is total and complete bullshit.

Setting aside that his concerns were sparked by misplaced anger over reporting on his financial disclosure form, which is a publicly available document, the Scaramucci kerfuffle marked just the latest example of a member of the Trump administration attempting to use the Justice Department as something of a personal enforcement arm.

Bingo.

Contacts like Scaramucci’s run up again longstanding, binding regulations that strictly limit contact between the White House and Justice Department. Since the Watergate era, each new attorney general and each White House general counsel has laid out an updated version of their contact policy, dictating that only senior members of each body may be in contact with each other about investigations, and even then only in very specific instances.

[...]

Trump’s White House counsel, Don McGahn, laid out his own contact policy in a Jan. 27 memo. Sessions has not yet crafted one for his DOJ, meaning former Attorney General Eric Holder’s remains the binding standard.

The communications director is not on either list of individuals approved to contact law enforcement officials.

[...]

“And nobody at the FBI is included in that list.”

The Mooch didn't speak to anyone in the FBI, I'm sure. The only problem here is that the Trump DOJ is part of the crooked, sleazeball Trump administration, whether they are "supposed to be" or not. It's not likely that Scaramucci spoke with Sessions or Rosenstein, since they're on Trump's blacklist, but he could well have spoken to a subordinate.

The DOJ did not respond to TPM’s request for comment on the conversation Scaramucci said he had with Sessions, but issued a statement Wednesday night saying the agency planned to “aggressively purse leak cases wherever they may lead.”

“We agree with Anthony that these staggering number of leaks are undermining the ability of our government to function and to protect this country,” department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in the statement.

[...]

Further complicating the contacts Scaramucci said he had with DOJ is that it appears he’s not even a formal member of the Trump White House yet.

Yeah, what is up with that? He's acting like he's the WH Communications Director. That's what everyone is calling him.

When he came onboard last week, he announced he would not formally assume his post until Aug. 15, pending the approval of the sale of his investment firm, SkyBridge Capital (Huckabee Sanders said Thursday she doesn’t believe he’s yet taken an oath of office).

So there's his out right there. Somebody just block the sale and they have an excuse for him "resigning".

The DOJ has in recent days signaled that it plans to pursue an intensive criminal investigation of intelligence leaks, as the President has requested.

[...]

[T]hese circumstances are ripe for abuses of power, Matthew Miller, a former director of the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs under Obama, told TPM.

“You have Sessions probably feeling a little like he wants to curry favor with the President and he can do that by starting leak investigations, or by approving this sale that would put millions of dollars into Scaramucci’s pocket” and allow the communications director to fully move into his White House role, Miller said.

[...]

“The DOJ is not supposed to make assessments based on general complaints from the White House communications director,” Miller said, “but when you have an AG fighting for his job and unwilling to fight for the department’s independence, it brings all this into question.”

Weasley Sessions just might do that. On the other hand, since The Mooch is radioactive right now, and he's taking up too much press coverage and publicity that might otherwise go to The Don, it could be Trump will want to get rid of him after all. Sessions is going to have to read this one right to get back in the good graces of The Don.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.