Instafired White House mistake Anthony Scaramucci took exception to being insulted in an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper. So he threatened to sue its author, bringing upon himself instant if entirely predictable injury.

Scaramucci wasn’t backing down as he took to Twitter into the night to blast anyone criticizing his legal action threats.

Scaramucci is a member of the advisory board at Tufts’ Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy. A Fletcher student tweeted, “Oh wow. An advisor to our institution, Scaramucci is threatening to sue both my classmate and our student newspaper. Honestly, I came to the U.S. hoping that I would not deal with this kind of things, that are so common in Russia.”

Scaramucci fired back, writing, “This is a dishonest tweet. I asked for an apology. Plain and simple. In our country defamation comes with its consequences.”

Ken White inflicts a papality.

Lieberman's letter on behalf of Scaramucci is frivolous, thuggish, and an example of the modern trend of people with money believing that they should be protected from criticism through abuse of the legal system.

As I've discussed here many times before, only provable statements of fact can be defamatory. An opinion that does not imply a provably false statement of fact cannot be defamatory and is absolutely protected by the First Amendment. ...

Scaramucci's letter is vexatious, meritless, dishonest, and thuggish. A decent lawyer would not draft it and a decent man would not have it sent on his behalf. It represents the growing trend of the wealthy leveraging a broken legal system to suppress criticism.

The New Yorker is running the audio of the phone call between its Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, and Anthony Scaramucci, who was the White House's brand spanking new communications director. In the call, Scaramucci asked Lizza to reveal the name of the person who told him the names of people in attendance at a dinner with Trump. He also called Reince Priebus “a paranoid schizophrenic,” and said Steve Bannon tries to suck his own dick. Scaramucci "resigned" days later.

Photo of Anthony Scaramucci: Jdarsie11 Read the rest

Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, called The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza on the phone last night. He was angry because Lizza had tweeted earlier that night: "Scoop: Trump is dining tonight w/Sean Hannnity, Bill Shine (former Fox News executive), & Anthony Scaramucci, per to 2 knowledgeable sources," and "Senior White House official tells me that Melania was also at the dinner tonight with Trump, Hannity, Shine, and Scaramucci."

He wanted Lizza to reveal his sources. When Lizza refused, Scaramucci hilariously threatened to fire everyone on the White House communications staff. "I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source," wrote Lizza.

Later on the call, Scaramucci went on a potty-mouthed rant about Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. Lizza dutifully transcribed it:

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.