New communications chief begins job
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s well-known but increasingly sidelined press secretary, Sean Spicer, resigned on Friday, as the president shuffled his legal and communications teams.
Spicer told the president of his decision on Friday morning, after learning that Trump had hired Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier and frequent Trump defender on Fox News, as communications director.
Scaramucci then announced, in his debut appearance in the White House briefing room, that Sarah Huckabee Sanders would take over as press secretary, making official the job she has been doing for weeks as Spicer has been relegated to the background.
Spicer will leave the White House in August, he wrote on Twitter, adding that it had been “an honor & a privilege to serve” Trump.
The changes were part of Trump’s broader staff shake-up at the sixmonth mark of his presi- dency.
For months the president has complained, openly at times, at what he sees as the inability of his communications team to counter the steady drip of damaging headlines.
The president also reorganized his legal team in recent days. His longtime personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, will have a reduced role; he publicly defended Trump’s firing of FBI Director James B. Comey in early May, but is reportedly not eligible for a security clearance that will likely be needed to handle material related to the Russia inquiry.
Trump has hired longtime Washington defense attorneys John Dowd and Ty Cobb to join conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow, who frequently appears on television to defend the president. Dowd will lead the legal team for the Russia investigation.
The recently hired spokesman for the legal team, Mark Corallo, also resigned Friday. A Jus- tice Department spokesman during the George W. Bush administration, Corallo was said to be uncomfortable with criticism from Trump and his associates of officials Corallo knew at the Justice Department who are now involved in the Russia investigation.
Trump’s legal team is collecting information on Justice Department special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the investigators he has hired, including their party affiliations and political donations.
“It’s relevant that people know what their motivations are. That is not an attack on the team,” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Friday on Fox News.
Lawyers for Trump are reportedly also examining what specific power the president has to pardon people who might be charged by the special counsel, including himself.
“The president retains pardon power just like any other president would,” Sanders told reporters.
Scaramucci, who worked on Trump’s transition, sold his stake in SkyBridge Capital, which manages hedge funds, to a Chinese conglomerate in January in hopes of landing a White House job.
When asked what he would do to “right the ship” at the White House, Scaramucci said that the administration was going in the right direction and that he would focus on improving the communications strategy.
Scaramucci largely avoided questions about Trump’s legal strategy on Friday, telling reporters he knew most of Trump’s attorneys but had not yet met with them to discuss what he could say.