Ousted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci on Wednesday attacked the journalist whose interview may have cost “The Mooch” his job.
That journalist, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, recorded Scaramucci as he trashed his colleagues — including accusing chief strategist Steve Bannon of a particularly inventive feat of onanism — and subsequently published the shocking transcript and tape. Lizza has maintained that all of his reporting came from on-the-record statements.
Nonetheless, Scaramucci says his trust was betrayed. On Wednesday evening, he compared Lizza to Linda Tripp, who played a key role in the Monica Lewinsky scandal during Bill Clinton’s second term as president. Tripp surreptitiously recorded phone calls with Lewinsky as the young staffer described her affair with Clinton.
.@RyanLizza is the Linda Tripp of 2017. People know. And he is up at night not being able to live with himself.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) August 10, 2017
Yes. He absolutely taped the call without my permission. #lowlife https://t.co/fTDcBw4vcT
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) August 10, 2017
Lewinsky responded to Scaramucci with a single emoji:
— Monica Lewinsky (@MonicaLewinsky) August 10, 2017
Scaramucci has never claimed his conversation with Lizza was explicitly off the record. But he has aired various grievances against the New Yorker journalist.
After Lizza’s initial report, Scaramucci said he “made a mistake in trusting a reporter,” and that the phone call was “[l]egally” on the record, though in “spirit,” “it was off.”
New York requires only “one-party consent” to tape conversations, meaning Lizza did not need Scaramucci’s permission to record.
Lizza did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment, but he has maintained Scaramucci knew the bulk of the call was on the record. After he published the interview, he noted that Scaramucci even requested a segment of the conversation be off the record, “and we respected that.”
Lizza separately said that he spoke to Scaramucci before publishing the story, and that Scaramucci told him, “Look I understand that interview was not off the record, totally within your rights to publish it.”
