Anthony Scaramucci, newly appointed White House communications director, on Sunday tried to cast doubt on the basis for the federal investigation into possible collusion by members of President Donald Trump’s campaign with the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election.
“I worked intensely on that campaign and I think that the Russian situation is completely overblown,” Scaramucci said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Scaramucci cited senior White House adviser Jared Kushner’s upcoming testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I’m confident that tomorrow when Jared Kushner speaks, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed in saying this to you, it’ll probably be the last time he has to talk about Russia,” he said.
Scaramucci insisted that Trump is not going to issue pardons, despite the President’s claim early Saturday morning that he has the “complete power to pardon.”
“He has no one to pardon. He hasn’t done anything wrong, he was just making a statement about power to pardon,” he said.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” he added that Trump “isn’t going to have to pardon anybody because the Russia thing is a nonsensical thing.”
Scaramucci said “somebody” called him doubting whether Russia interfered in the election at all.
“Somebody said to me yesterday, I won’t tell you who, that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it, you would have never had any evidence of them,” he said. “Meaning that they’re super confident in their deception skills and hacking.”
Pressed on who his anonymous cyber security expert source was, Scaramucci said, “How about it was the President.”
“He called me from Air Force One and he basically said to me, ‘Hey, you know, this is — maybe they did do it, maybe they didn’t do it,'” he said.
The U.S. intelligence community has concluded otherwise.
