An ethics watchdog group is calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether Anthony Scaramucci sought to leverage his contacts in the FBI and Justice Department as part of an internal White House power struggle against chief of staff Reince Priebus and others.
In a letter to the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Friday, Austin Evers, the executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, pointed to Scaramucci’s comments in an interview with The New Yorker, in which he said that he had contacted the FBI and Justice Department about leaks of his publicly available financial disclosure forms.
In that interview, Scaramucci blamed Priebus for leaking the document — an act he called a “felony.”
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“During his profane rant to a reporter on Wednesday evening, Mr. Scaramucci didn’t just reveal that he lacks the temperament for public service, he also openly admitted to highly inappropriate contact with the Department of Justice that recalls the worst days of using the FBI to compile dossiers on political opponents,” Evers said.
“By bragging about using his connections at the FBI to investigate White House leakers, Scaramucci is showing us yet again that this administration has zero respect for the rule of law or the importance of independent law enforcement.”
Evers said investigators should examine Scaramucci’s contacts with the Justice Department.
Scaramucci first indicated his intent to contact the FBI and Justice Department about the “leak” on Wednesday in a since-deleted tweet.
In an interview on CNN Thursday, Scaramucci said that he had spoken to Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the matter and that he had “buddies” in the FBI that he planned to contact.
Scaramucci has carried on a public feud with Priebus since he entered the White House last week.
But the communications director’s attacks on the chief of staff escalated on Wednesday during his interview with The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza. In that conversation, Scaramucci ripped Priebus as a “f—— paranoid schizophrenic” and acknowledged that he wanted to force Priebus out of the White House.
The letter from American Oversight voices concern that Scaramucci may have tried to recruit the help of federal law enforcement officials to carry out his affront on Priebus and those who leak information from within the White House.
“Longstanding policies place strict limits on contacts between the White House and law enforcement, and it’s never appropriate for someone in Mr. Scaramucci’s position to recruit agents as part of an internal power struggle,” Evers wrote.