summary: Anthony Scaramucci is an American financier, entrepreneur, and political consultant.
content: Anthony Scaramucci (/skærəˈmuːtʃiː/, ska-rə-MOOch-chee; born January 6, 1964), nicknamed "The Mooch", is an American financier, entrepreneur, and political consultant who briefly served as the White House Director of Communications from July 21 to July 31, 2017. Scaramucci worked at Goldman Sachs' investment banking, equities, and private wealth management divisions between 1989 and 1996. After leaving Goldman Sachs, he founded Oscar Capital Management, and in 2005, he founded the investment firm SkyBridge Capital. On July 21, 2017, Scaramucci was appointed White House Communications Director. He began work on July 25, although he had not yet been sworn in. Days into the job, Scaramucci provoked controversy after an expletive-laden interview with The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, in which he made obscene and strongly derogatory statements about several members of the Trump administration. Ten days after the announcement of his appointment, he was fired by President Donald Trump on the recommendation of the new White House Chief of Staff, John F. Kelly. He is a recurring guest on the sports/comedy podcast Pardon My Take presented by Barstool Sports and was a "Fake HouseGuest" on Celebrity Big Brother 2. Early life Scaramucci was born into an Italian-American family on January 6, 1964, on Long Island, New York, where he was raised in Port Washington. He is the son of Marie DeFeo Scaramucci and Alexander Scaramucci, who was a construction worker. His paternal grandfather Alessandro Scaramucci immigrated to the United States from Gualdo Tadino, Umbria. He had a middle-class upbringing. He has an older brother, David, and a sister, Susan. Scaramucci graduated in 1982 from Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School in Port Washington, where he served as student council president. He earned a B.A. in economics at Tufts University and a J.D. at Harvard Law School. Scaramucci credits his time and education at Harvard Law School as a springboard for his career in finance. Scaramucci has never practiced law. Career in investment banking After graduating from law school, Scaramucci began his career at Goldman Sachs in 1989, in the Investment Banking division. A year later he was fired, then rehired two months later in the Equities division. Later, he worked in Private Wealth Management. He left Goldman in 1996 to start a new hedge fund. Oscar Capital Management Scaramucci left Goldman in 1996 to launch Oscar Capital Management with his colleague Andrew Boszhardt. In 2001, Oscar Capital was sold to Neuberger Berman, and upon Neuberger Berman's sale to Lehman Brothers in 2003, Scaramucci served as a managing director in the firm's Investment Management division. SkyBridge Capital In 2005, Scaramucci founded SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm. Scaramucci was the chairman of the SkyBridge Alternatives "SALT" Conference, launched in 2009 and held in Las Vegas every spring. In 2011, Scaramucci received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award New York Award in the Financial Services category, and in 2016 was ranked 85 in Worth magazine's "Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance". In May 2014, SkyBridge licensed the rights to Wall Street Week, a financial television news program formerly hosted by Louis Rukeyser on PBS. Scaramucci hosted the show. Broadcast rights were transferred to Fox Broadcasting Company in 2016. On January 17, 2017, SkyBridge announced a majority stake sale to RON Transatlantic EG and HNA Capital (U.S.) Holding, a Chinese conglomerate with close ties to China's Communist Party. With the announcement, Scaramucci stepped down from his co-management role and ended his affiliation with SkyBridge and SALT. In April 2018, it was announced that Scaramucci would be returning to SkyBridge after the deal with HNA Group had collapsed due to the lack of approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an inter-agency government committee. Although the deal was called off, the two firms may strike a deal for HNA to market SkyBridge's products in China. Career in politics Scaramucci supported the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In 2008, Scaramucci also served as a fundraiser for President Barack Obama. In September 2010, however, Scaramucci asked Obama at a CNBC Town Hall meeting when he was going to "stop whacking Wall Street like a piñata". Scaramucci has tweeted at various times that he has "always been for strong gun control laws", and that "Republicans should support gay marriage". He served as the national finance co-chair for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. In 2015, on a Fox Business Network television appearance, Scaramucci called Trump a "hack politician" whose rhetoric is "anti-American and very, very divisive." He further warned Trump to "cut it out now", and "stop all this crazy rhetoric." In December 2015, Scaramucci criticized Trump's call for a border wall between Mexico and the U.S. He also criticized Trump for "making a fundamental mistake of trying to blame all of Islam and all Muslims for what is the ideology and the actions of a minority". Ahead of the 2016 election, Scaramucci tweeted that he hoped Hillary Clinton would be the next president. During the 2016 presidential election, Scaramucci first endorsed Scott Walker and later Jeb Bush. In May 2016, after both Walker and Bush had withdrawn from the race, Scaramucci signed on to Donald Trump's political campaign by joining the Trump Finance Committee. In November 2016, he was appointed to President-elect Trump's Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee. In August 2019, Scaramucci said that he no longer supported the reelection of Donald Trump as US president. He was critical of Trump's divisive statements, and of the president's visits to places where mass shootings occurred. Nomination to Office of Public Liaison On January 12, 2017, Scaramucci was named Assistant to President Trump and director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs. On January 23, he told New York magazine: the "thing I have learned about these people in Washington is they have no money. So what happens when they have no fucking money is they write about what seat they are in and what the title is. Fucking congressmen act like that. They are fucking jackasses". Scaramucci attended the World Economic Forum in Davos January 16–17 as the representative for the Trump transition team. Part of his mission was to reassure attendees about the incoming Trump administration. Following Chinese President Xi Jinping, he gave a talk warning against protectionism and championing free trade. He also met with Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, to discuss future joint investments. The Fund was under U.S. sanctions at the time. On January 19, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ben Cardin expressed to Treasury Secretary-Designate Steve Mnuchin their concerns of possible sanctions violations involving Scaramucci's discussions with Dmitriev. Mnuchin forwarded their concerns to the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Fox Business reported on January 31, 2017, that "Scaramucci's delayed appointment underscores some of the tensions building inside the Trump White House ... as various aides and advisers continue to jockey for his attention and to retain and expand their power". According to Politico, on January 31, 2017, with Scaramucci's appointment still pending approval by the United States Office of Government Ethics (OGE), Trump's chief of staff Reince Priebus called Scaramucci "to tell him he should pull out of consideration". They reported that Priebus opposed Scaramucci's appointment because of Scaramucci's stake in Skybridge Capital. Several senior White House officials questioned the significance of any internal feuding in Scaramucci's appointment delay, citing instead the months required to conclude his sale of SkyBridge. Reuters reported on February 1 that Scaramucci would not get the director role. In a February 2017 New York magazine article, Priebus was quoted as saying rumors that he interfered with the hiring were "not true". On March 6, 2017, the White House announced the appointment of Ideagen founder and former CEO George Sifakis as director for the Office of Public Liaison, instead of Scaramucci. The next day, Politico reported that "White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus is still considering offering financier Anthony Scaramucci a role" in the administration. Export–Import Bank of the United States Effective June 19, 2017, Scaramucci was named senior vice president and chief strategy officer for the U.S. Export-Import Bank. He was also still under consideration for a post as ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CNN retraction and apology On June 26, 2017, three network investigative journalists—Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau, and Lex Haris—resigned from CNN after the network retracted a story that connected Scaramucci to a $10 billion Russian investment fund. CNN issued an apology to Scaramucci (who accepted the apology), with the network saying the online story (which appeared on CNN's website and was not aired on television) did not meet its editorial standards. Scaramucci said the original story was not true; CNN did not say the story was false, but said that it "wasn't solid enough" to be published. White House Communications Director On July 21, 2017, President 