Prankster tricks Anthony Scaramucci into thinking he's emailing with Reince Priebus

The White House.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

A British "email prankster" spent the past few days fooling several White House officials and other people close to President Trump into thinking they were talking to each other, CNN reports.

The trickster made Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, who has been tasked with overseeing cyber security, think he was accepting an invitation to a "bit of a soiree" from Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. The message was sent to Bossert's White House email address, and when he responded to the fake Kushner, he also gave him his personal address.

The prankster was also able to convince former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci that he was emailing with Reince Priebus, Trump's former chief of staff. In an email sent Saturday, the faux Priebus accused Scaramucci of never acting in a way "that's even remotely classy," and said he has been "diabolical." The real Scaramucci told the fake Priebus: "You know what you did. We all do. Even today. But rest assured, we were prepared. A Man would apologize." They had another exchange, which ended with Scaramucci recommending that fake Priebus "read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello. You are right there."

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Other pawns in this game included Eric Trump, who actually figured out that he wasn't really responding to an email from his brother Donald Jr., and Jon Huntsman, the nominee for U.S. ambassador to Russia, who thought he was talking to Eric Trump. The trickster, who showed the emails to CNN, said he was just trying to see how far he could take things, and wasn't trying to install viruses into computers or hack into accounts. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN they are "looking into these incidents further."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.