Trump wanted Kelly to ‘get rid of’ Ivanka, Kushner, book claims

President Trump directed his former chief of staff John Kelly to “get rid of” his Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner shortly after the retired general joined the White House and send them back to New York, according to revelations in a new book.

“Kushner Inc.” claims that Trump wanted Kelly to remove his son-in-law and his elder daughter from the White House because his children “didn’t know how to play the game,” the books states, according to a report by The New York Times on Monday.

{mosads}According to the Times, the book authored by journalist Vicky Ward claims Trump used to complain about his children generating waves of negative press.

Kelly allegedly told Trump at the time that it would be difficult to fire his children but later agreed with Trump they “would make life difficult enough to force the pair to offer their resignations,” the Times reported. 

Associates familiar with the matter told the Times that the pair have since outlasted those plans and added that the president’s desire for his children to leave the White House has “come and gone in waves.”

Kelly resigned as chief of staff last December. Since his resignation, both Ivanka Trump and Kushner have gained influence. Kushner even scored a legislative victory last year with the passage of a criminal justice reform bill he had championed. 

White House officials have dismissed the claims in Ward’s book, as has a representative for Kushner. 

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told the Times that “it seems [Ward] has written a book of fiction rather than any serious attempt to get the facts.”

“Every point that Ms. Ward mentioned in what she called her ‘fact checking’ stage was entirely false,” he also said, adding: “Correcting everything wrong would take too long and be pointless.”