Former Donald Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci tore into White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, accusing him of blocking his access to the president at the White House and Davos and driving away Trump’s most-important advisers at a critical moment when the White House is in chaos.
"Does the president want to lose everyone because of General Jackass?" Scaramucci said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Scaramucci says he now fears Kelly will thwart his bid to sell his stake in SkyBridge Capital to China’s HNA Group Co. The sale has been stuck at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews foreign acquisitions of domestic businesses for security risks.
"Let’s see what he says about that,” Scaramucci said. “That’ll be the next food fight. ‘Say, his company is before CFIUS right now. Are you going to block that deal?’”
Scaramucci reached the agreement to sell his stake to the Chinese conglomerate in January 2017 as he was shedding business conflicts to take a job in the Trump administration.
A White House official who requested anonymity to respond to the accusations said Kelly wouldn’t interfere with a national security review because of a personal dispute, adding that transactions are judged against established standards. Scaramucci hasn’t been blacklisted from White House grounds and would be allowed access for legitimate, official business on the same basis as other former staff members, the official said.
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Scaramucci’s fury with Trump’s chief of staff has been well-known since his dismissal on Kelly’s first day managing the White House. Scaramucci lost the job less than two weeks after he had been hired, largely over a tirade against then-chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Now Scaramucci is at it again, but this time the target is Kelly -- making him one of Kelly’s most high-profile critics at a time when some other Trump loyalists are questioning whether the president is being ill-served by the chief of staff, who has limited Trump’s access to some of his closest allies from the campaign.
"There will be a further evacuation of talent,” Scaramucci said in the interview.