Anthony Scaramucci may have met his demise as White House communications chief when he unleashed his foul-mouthed rant to a New Yorker reporter and the story went viral. It was only four days later that President Trump fired “the Mooch.”
If Scaramucci is looking to get back at the press after his firing on Monday, he should read up on New York divorce court laws. The laws probably will keep reporters from probing into his new and potentially explosive divorce court case. For 100 years.
Scaramucci’s wife, Deidre Ball, reportedly filed for divorce from Scaramucci on July 6, just before she gave birth to the couple’s child. She reportedly filed for divorce because of Scaramucci’s “naked political ambition” to work for Trump, whom she despised.
Scaramucci is lucky his soon-to-be ex didn’t move to Washington D.C. — She filed her divorce papers in New York, where the couple has been living.
Most states say that divorce court cases are open to the public and press. But not New York. New York Domestic Relations Law section 235, requires divorce cases to be kept secret for 100 years.
A group of news organizations were blocked by New York divorce court secrecy laws in 2016 when they tried to persuade a court to unseal court records from Trump’s 1990 divorce from Ivana Trump.
The New York Times and other media organizations argued that the public had a right to see the couple’s divorce court records because Donald Trump was then the GOP nominee for president.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Frank Nervo said no.
“Were the court to make the confidential records available for journalistic, and thus public, scrutiny, it would impermissibly inject itself into the political process by making the value judgment of what information is useful in determining the present candidate’s, or any other candidate’s, fitness for office,” Nervo wrote in his decision.
If the New York Times couldn’t get Trump’s divorce files unsealed in 2016, when Trump was running for president, there seems to be little chance reporters could unseal Scaramucci’s divorce court files.