Incoming White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Wednesday the Trump administration is looking to impose a “cultural reset” on leaks coming from the White House and other officials.
“We’re going to try to hit a cultural reset on these leaks, not only here in the White House, but I’m going to be working with the agencies as well,” Scaramucci told Fox News Wednesday morning.
Scaramucci confirmed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will announce formal investigations into leakers of intelligence documents in the coming days.
“I think he has got a plan that he has put together and at some point, I don’t know if it will be today, tomorrow or next week, he will announce that plan,” Scaramucci said. “We have to crack down on leaks on a number of different fronts. There seems to be some holdovers, political holdovers from the Obama administration, that are not helping.”
But the new communications chief warned getting leaks down to zero would be “absolutely impossible.” Scaramucci’s goal is diminishing leaks from senior White House officials who release damaging information about colleagues or Trump’s behavior.
“That does not serve the president. It doesn’t serve his agenda. It’s an indictment on the institution of the presidency. It makes all of us look bad. And I think the president himself deserves better than that,” he added.
The leak crackdown and possible charges against leakers could improve Sessions’ relationship with Trump. The president has twice lambasted Sessions on Twitter this week, and is frustrated with Sessions for failing to crack down on leaks, and because he recused himself from the Russia investigation in the spring due to previous communications with Russian officials.
