President Donald Trump's staff is too "incestuous" and Washington-oriented and needs changes, Larry Klayman, founder of the government watchdog Freedom Watch, told Newsmax TV on Friday amid major changes in White House communications office.
"I think that the president got the wrong people and it's not bad that there's going to be a shakeup here," Klayman, a former federal prosecutor, told Miranda Khan on Newsmax's "America Talks Live."
On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned shortly after Trump announced the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director. Scaramucci then said Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was replacing Spicer.
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"The president loves Fox News, sometimes he hires his lawyers off of Fox News, but he needs to get somebody outside of Washington, D.C. There's too [many] incestuous relationships there.
"The people that he's hired … Jared Kushner his son-in-law, and others, are Clinton loyalists. I mean [Kushner's attorney] Jamie Gorelick, for instance, is another one and it's very murky."
Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow may not be the best choice as Trump's lawyer, either, Klayman told Khan.
"Although I like Jay Sekulow a lot, he's a friend of mine, he's a good guy, and I think he's doing a decent job, he's not a criminal defense lawyer. So what you need here is somebody who truly is a criminal defense lawyer because this is where this case is going," he said.
Klayman also believes White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus — who is said to have resisted the appointment of Scaramucci — should be shown the door.
"If we leave the White House to Reince Priebus, we can pretty much forget it. I mean this is an establishment Republican. He's not a conservative, he's not even a libertarian and he doesn't really know the way Washington works," Klayman said.
"He's from Wisconsin. He knows how to fundraise for the RNC [Republican National Committee] as the former chairman, and that's the problem.
"We need a stronger chief of staff that can keep control of what's going on, that's tough, that knows how to deal with Congress. Priebus does not and that I think is the biggest problem. He's been the problem and I think Priebus should go."
Asked about the fate of Steve Bannon, Trump's controversial White House chief strategist who is also reported to have resisted Scaramucci, Klayman said:
"He's been called a racist, he's been called an anti-Semite, I mean he's none of those things. It's ridiculous. But he gets the attention because they've made him the Darth Vader of the administration …
"He had a big role to play in getting the president elected. And I think maybe Bannon is being undercut by the Roger Stones and others of this world who want to take credit for this election."
Klayman's group Freedom Watch is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as "working to protect and promote freedom in the U.S. and around the world."
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