Long before President Donald Trump s communications director Anthony Scaramucci was dropping F-bombs at his boss s perceived enemies, he was just another aspiring attorney studying at Harvard Law School. So what was The Mooch, a 1989 Harvard Law grad, like during his time on campus? Well, that depends on whom you ask. As Scaramucci s first week working for Trump ended in spectacular fashion, we rounded up some highlights about him as a 1L, his advice for current law students, and how a former professor feels about him today.
The Bookworm
To hear Scaramucci tell it, he spent his early days on campus hiding in the law library and avoiding his classmates. I was very intimidated by Harvard Law School and thought I was in for massive annihilation, so I holed up in Langdell and spent too much time there, Scaramucci told students during a 2010 visit to the law school to promote his book, Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul, according to a story on the law school s website. I wish I had spent more time meeting my classmates. I encourage students to spend time meeting each other. Scaramucci s appetite for studying apparently waned by the time he graduated in 1989. He told students that he failed to study for the bar exam, and subsequently failed the test.
A Big Personality
Harvard classmate Richard Kahlenberg recalls a much different and more confident young Scaramucci in an article published Friday in Washington Monthly. Scaramucci was seen as a big personality and exuberant figure on campus who did things like proposing to his girlfriend on a Times Square billboard, wrote Kahlenberg, who is an author and fellow at the Century Foundation. Scaramucci was a well-liked and high-profile figure in the class of 1989, he wrote. The son of working-class parents from Long Island, neither of whom were college graduates, Scaramucci enjoyed challenging Harvard s pretensions. Scaramucci was apparently unafraid to take an intimidating tax professor down a peg in class with a pointed comment about his hair.
An A- In Constitutional Law
Scaramucci may have failed the bar exam, but he seems to have performed well in professor Laurence Tribe s constitutional law class. In an interview on CNN Sunday, Scaramucci boasted to host Jake Tapper that he earned an A- in the class. Tribe was apparently unimpressed, telling the New York Daily News the following day that Scaramucci s grasp of the subject now seems tenuous. I was surprised to hear Anthony Scaramucci mention on CNN the A- he received in the constitutional law course he took from me at Harvard in the late 1980s, Tribe said. The syllabus that year apparently didn t cover the issues associated with abusing the pardon power to obstruct justice. Either that, or Mr. Scaramucci has forgotten some of what he learned. Ouch.