Anthony Scaramucci has had some difficulty over the course of his first few days as White House communications director, but as he wrapped up his first week on the job he managed to provide an unambiguous answer to one question on the minds of millions of Americans watching the Trump presidency with equal parts curiosity and horror: 
 
 Yes, it can get more absurd. 
 
 Late Wednesday, Scaramucci took to Twitter to announce that he’d be going to the FBI to report a felonious leak of his financial disclosure forms. Politico had published a story about the disclosures earlier in the evening and Scaramucci wasn’t happy. He was certain that he knew the source of the leak and when he tweeted about the alleged breach, he included the Twitter handle of the man he believed responsible, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. 
 
 At 10:41 p.m. Wednesday, Scaramucci tweeted: “In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept. #swamp @Reince45.�? The inclusion of Priebus in the tweet immediately set political reporters about calling, emailing and texting their White House sources to confirm that Scaramucci was in fact doing what he appeared to be doing: Publicly accusing the White House chief of staff of a felony. 
 
 The answer came quickly. Within the hour there appeared to be confirmation of Scaramucci’s intent. Ryan Lizza, a staff writer with the New Yorker who had first reported details of Trump’s dinner Wednesday with Scaramucci, Sean Hannity, and former Fox News executive Bill Shine, tweeted: “In case there's any ambiguity in his tweet I can confirm that Scaramucci wants the FBI to investigate Reince for leaking.�? 
 
 Hannity retweeted his dinner companion’s FBI tweet and added: “Great! #MAGA�? 
 
 Was Scaramucci leaking insider details of his crusade against leaks? Did he have proof that Priebus was the leaker? 
 
 Philip Rucker, who covers the White House for the Washington Post, tweeted: “Tensions between Scaramucci and Priebus are raw as ever, I’m told tonight. There’s a reason Mooch tagged Reince on FBI leak tweet.�? A short time later he added: “Some in White House are trying to build a case that Priebus is a leaker—‘a diagram’ charting leaks, per senior official—to show Trump.�? 
 
 Scaramucci, it seemed, was trying to shoot the king—or at least publicly frame him. And he wasn’t shy about telling others at the White House that he believed Priebus had leaked the documents, though he couldn’t provide evidence to support his claims. Still, Scaramucci vowed to make Priebus pay. 
 
 The plan, however, had several flaws. The most significant: Scaramucci didn’t just lack evidence that Priebus was behind the leak—he lacked evidence that there had even been a leak in the first place. 
 
 As Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos reported late Wednesday night in the New York Times: 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mr. Scaramucci filed the disclosure form in connection with his previous, short-lived job with the Trump administration at the Export-Import Bank. Under federal law, anyone can request such a report on a government website 30 days after its receipt. Mr. Scaramucci’s report says it was filed on June 23, which means it could be publicly released by the bank on July 23, or last Sunday. Politico did not indicate whether it obtained the report through such a regular request. Asked why he thought the report had been leaked illegally, Mr. Scaramucci responded by text: “They aren’t in process yet.�? But when told his form could be released on July 23, he did not respond further. 
 
 There was a reason Scaramucci didn't respond further: There had been no leak. The Politico reporter, Lorraine Woellert, obtained Scaramucci's disclosures by making a routine request to the Ex-Im bank for the form 278e that Scaramucci completed before working there. Woellert tweeted: "Mr @Scaramucci's Form 278e is publicly available from ExIm. Just ask." 
 
 If Scaramucci didn’t respond to the Times, he did respond—where else?—on Twitter. Scaramucci tweeted an Axios piece headlined: “Scaramucci appears to want Priebus investigated by FBI.�? Scaramucci denied the claim: “Wrong! Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks. ‪@Reince45.�? ||||| On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me. 
 
 “Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.” 
 
 In Scaramucci’s view, the fact that word of the dinner had reached a reporter was evidence that his rivals in the West Wing, particularly Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, were plotting against him. While they have publicly maintained that there is no bad blood between them, Scaramucci and Priebus have been feuding for months. After the election, Trump asked Scaramucci to join his Administration, and Scaramucci sold his company, SkyBridge Capital, in anticipation of taking on a senior role. But Priebus didn’t want him in the White House, and successfully blocked him from being appointed to a job until last week, when Trump offered him the communications job over Priebus’s vehement objections. In response to Scaramucci’s appointment, Sean Spicer, an ally of Priebus’s, resigned his position as press secretary. And in an additional slight to Priebus, the White House’s official announcement of Scaramucci’s hiring noted that he would report directly to the President, rather than to the chief of staff. 
 
 Scaramucci’s first public appearance as communications director was a slick and conciliatory performance at the lectern in the White House briefing room last Friday. He suggested it was time for the White House to turn a page. But since then, he has become obsessed with leaks and threatened to fire staffers if he discovers that they have given unauthorized information to reporters. Michael Short, a White House press aide considered close to Priebus, resigned on Tuesday after Scaramucci publicly spoke about firing him. Meanwhile, several damaging stories about Scaramucci have appeared in the press, and he blamed Priebus for most of them. Now, he wanted to know whom I had been talking to about his dinner with the President. Scaramucci, who initiated the call, did not ask for the conversation to be off the record or on background. 
 
 “Is it an assistant to the President?” he asked. I again told him I couldn’t say. “O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them, and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.” 
 
 I asked him why it was so important for the dinner to be kept a secret. Surely, I said, it would become public at some point. “I’ve asked people not to leak things for a period of time and give me a honeymoon period,” he said. “They won’t do it.” He was getting more and more worked up, and he eventually convinced himself that Priebus was my source. 
 
 “They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.) 
 
 Scaramucci was particularly incensed by a Politico report about his financial-disclosure form, which he viewed as an illegal act of retaliation by Priebus. The reporter said Thursday morning that the document was publicly available and she had obtained it from the Export-Import Bank. Scaramucci didn’t know this at the time, and he insisted to me that Priebus had leaked the document, and that the act was “a felony.” 
 
 “I’ve called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice,” he told me. 
 
 “Are you serious?” I asked. 
 
 “The swamp will not defeat him,” he said, breaking into the third person. “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.” 
 
 Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.) 
 
 He reiterated that Priebus would resign soon, and he noted that he told Trump that he expected Priebus to launch a campaign against him. “He didn’t get the hint that I was reporting directly to the President,” he said. “And I said to the President here are the four or five things that he will do to me.” His list of allegations included leaking the Hannity dinner and the details from his financial-disclosure form. 
 
 I got the sense that Scaramucci’s campaign against leakers flows from his intense loyalty to Trump. Unlike other Trump advisers, I’ve never heard him say a bad word about the President. “What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people,” he told me. 
 
 He cryptically suggested that he had more information about White House aides. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.” 
 
 “What?” I interjected. 
 
 “Well, the felony, they’re gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.” He added, “The lie detector starts—” but then he changed the subject and returned to what he thought was the illegal leak of his financial-disclosure forms. I asked if the President knew all of this. 
 
 “Well, he doesn’t know the extent of all that, he knows about some of that, but he’ll know about the rest of it first thing tomorrow morning when I see him.” 
 
 Scaramucci said he had to get going. “Yeah, let me go, though, because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy.” 
 
 Minutes later, he tweeted, “In light of the leak of my financial info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45.” With the addition of Priebus’s Twitter handle, he was making public what he had just told me: that he believed Priebus was leaking information about him. The tweet quickly went viral. 
 
 Scaramucci seemed to have second thoughts. Within two hours he deleted the original tweet and posted a new one denying that he was targeting the chief of staff. “Wrong!” he said, adding a screenshot of an Axios article that said, “Scaramucci appears to want Priebus investigated by FBI.” Scaramucci continued, “Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks. @Reince45.” 
 
 A few hours later, I appeared on CNN to discuss the overnight drama. As I was talking about Scaramucci, he called into the show himself and referenced our conversation. He changed his story about Priebus. Instead of saying that he was trying to expose Priebus as a leaker, he said that the reason he mentioned Priebus in his deleted tweet was because he wanted to work together with Priebus to discover the leakers. 
 
 “He’s the chief of staff, he’s responsible for understanding and uncovering and helping me do that inside the White House, which is why I put that tweet out last night,” Scaramucci said, after noting that he had talked to me Wednesday night. He then made an argument that journalists were assuming that he was accusing Priebus because they know Priebus leaks to the press. 
 
 “When I put out a tweet, and I put Reince’s name in the tweet,” he said, “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.” 
 
 Scaramucci then made a plea to viewers. “Let me tell you something about myself,” he said. “I am a straight shooter.” 
 
 More: David Remnick and Ryan Lizza listen back to audio of the phone call from Anthony Scaramucci. 
 
 David Remnick on why Scaramucci’s attack on Priebus and Bannon matters. ||||| WASHINGTON — In the five days since he was named White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci has vowed to hunt down leakers and fire anyone he catches. By the end of his fifth day, he was on the receiving end of what he called a leak about himself. 
 
 The financial disclosure form that Mr. Scaramucci filed with the government appeared on Politico’s website on Wednesday night, showing that he has assets worth as much as $85 million. He made $5 million in salary and another $4.9 million from his ownership stake in his investment firm SkyBridge Capital in the first six months of this year, according to the filing. 
 
 Mr. Scaramucci responded angrily. “In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony,” he wrote on Twitter, “I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept.” 
 
 He added the hashtag #swamp, reflecting President Trump’s promise to drain the swamp, and then included the Twitter handle of Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, who opposed Mr. Scaramucci’s appointment last week. ||||| White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci took a page out of President Trump’s playbook Wednesday night with a tweet threatening to sic the FBI on a supposed information leaker. “In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting the FBI and the Justice Department,” Scaramucci wrote, inexplicably tagging White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Scaramucci did not specify what information was leaked, but a Politico article cited the incoming communications director’s required financial disclosure in reporting he earned $4.9 million since last year from his ownership stake in investment firm SkyBridge. Scaramucci appeared to delete the tweet, but in a subsequent post said Priebus was among the senior White House officials helping to crack down on leaks.
– New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was not happy about what he believed was a leak of information from his financial disclosure Wednesday—though it later emerged that the form was available to the public. "In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45," Scaramucci said in a now-deleted tweet, per the Daily Beast. Scaramucci later denied suggestions that his tagging of Reince Priebus was a declaration of war on the White House chief of staff. "Wrong! Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks," Scaramucci said in a second tweet. The disclosure information believed to have enraged Scaramucci appeared in a Politico report late Wednesday. According to the report, Scaramucci earned $4.9 million from his ownership stake in the SkyBridge Capital plus more than $5 million in salary from Jan. 1, 2016, to the end of June this year, when he began a short-lived stint at the federal Export-Import Bank. The New York Times notes that Scaramucci filed the disclosure form June 23 and under federal law, it would have been available to the public 30 days later. "They aren't in process yet," Scaramucci wrote to the Times after being asked why he thought the report had been leaked. He didn't respond after being told it would have been available July 23.