The controversy surrounding Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting last year with a lawyer with ties to Russia is leading family members to urge that President Donald Trump replace Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and senior adviser; Jared Kushner, her husband and another top adviser; and first lady Melania Trump have privately urged the president to replace Preibus, the Post said.
The report was based on information from "two senior White House officials and one ally close to the White House."
They are concerned that Priebus has been unable to stop the flow of media leaks since Trump took office in January.
"The kid is an honest kid," a friend of Trump Jr. told the Post. "The White House should've never let that story go out on the president's son.
"What he's upset about was that it was a minor meeting and the media glare — anything that's Russia-related, gets picked up the way roaches get caught in a roach motel."
However, aides deny the three are pushing for Priebus' removal.
"Of course, the first lady is concerned about leaks from her husband's administration, as all Americans should be," Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump's communications director, told the Post.
"And while she does offer advice and perspectives on many things, Mrs. Trump does not weigh in on West Wing staff."
White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walter said: "These sources have been consistently wrong about Reince, and they're still wrong today."
In addition, Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman for Kushner and Ivanka Trump, told the Post in a statement: "Jared and Ivanka are focused on working with Reince and the team to advance the president's agenda and not on pushing for staff changes."
President Trump has praised Priebus' work publicly in recent months – and allies told the Post the former Republican National Committee chairman has "done as good a job as can be expected under the unique circumstances of this administration."
In addition, "defenders of Priebus have long said they expect him to make it to a year in the position," the Post reported, and President Trump "is said to be hesitant to fire him or any other senior staffer" as special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe intensifies.
"He just looks at this as the continuum of taking a group of unrelated facts and putting them together in concentric circles and saying, 'Aha — look what happened!'" Thomas Barrack Jr., a longtime friend of the president, told the Post.
"With Don Jr., whatever set of facts there are may not lead to the conclusion that the establishment media is making," he said.
The New York Times first reported Saturday that Trump Jr. had arranged a meeting June 6 of last year with a lawyer who had ties to Moscow in hopes of obtaining damaging information on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. confirmed the meeting – and released emails exchanged before the meeting that said Moscow's government backed his father's presidential bid over Hillary Clinton's.
He also defended his actions in an interview late Tuesday with Sean Hannity on Fox News – conceding, however, in "retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently."
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