Speculation over when or if White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer would be fired or resign has circulated since his first contentious press briefing in January. Six months to the day later, Spicer announced his resignation.
The resignation was over President Donald Trump hiring Anthony Scaramucci to be his communications director, according to the New York Times. Trump reportedly asked Spicer to stay on in a 10 a.m. meeting when Trump announced the new hire, but Spicer resigned anyway.
So who is Anthony Scaramucci?
Most recently, he joined the Export-Import Bank as a senior vice president and chief strategy officer on June 19. But during the 2016 presidential election he was a major Republican donor, first to Scott Walker and Jeb Bush in the primary and later to Trump in the general election, according to Axios.
Before that, he sold his stake in his hedge fund, SkyBridge Capital, anticipating a job offer from the White House. He was considered for multiple roles, according to Politico, but Spicer asked him to take himself out of the running because Trump couldn’t wait for an ethics review to be completed on Scaramucci.
Most recently, Scaramucci was at the center of a controversy over a retracted CNN story in June. The article cited an anonymous source saying Scaramucci had met with a chief executive of a $10-billion Russian investment fund, and that Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee wanted to know if Scaramucci had indicated in that meeting that Russian sanctions might be lifted.
CNN later retracted the article, saying it “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.”
Scaramucci had called CNN Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist and threatened to sue over the story, according to Politico. Three staffers involved in the story resigned following the retraction.
Scaramucci is the third person to be offered the White House communications director job since Trump was elected. Jason Miller was the first to accept the post, but gave it up before Trump was sworn in. Michael Dubke held the job for three months before resigning in May.