Don Jr. reportedly accuses Kushner of leaking 2016 Trump Tower meeting as pair battle for control in 2020 campaign: They ‘really dislike each other’

Much has been written about some of the Republicans that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has had bad blood with, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. And, according to a report by Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, there is another prominent Republican Kushner isn’t getting along with: Donald Trump Jr.

For his July 3 article, Sherman interviewed some well-connected Republicans and conservatives — some of whom asserted that as Kushner and Trump Jr. battle for control in President Trump’s 2020 campaign, the animosity between them is evident. Brad Parscale, Sherman notes in his article, is Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, but Kushner and Trump Jr. are “jockeying to be the ultimate decision makers.”

“Jared wants to take control of the campaign,” a source close to Trump Jr. and former West Wing official told Sherman. “It’s about power.”

Sherman writes that according to sources, Kushner is hoping to marginalize the role that Tommy Hicks Jr. — co-chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and a close ally of Trump Jr. — plays in Trump’s campaign. Sherman reports that Kushner has asked RNC Co-Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, the niece of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, to stay away from Hicks — which McDaniel flatly denies, telling Sherman in an e-mail, “The president’s family, the campaign and RNC couldn’t be working any better together. This is a total team effort to re-elect the president, and Tommy is an integral part of it.”

But the allegation that there is bad blood between Trump, Jr. and Kushner didn’t just come from one of Sherman’s sources — it came from multiple GOP sources, one of whom told the Vanity Fair reporter, “Don Jr. and Jared really dislike each other.”

On June 9, 2016, Trump Jr. and Kushner — along with Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya — were among those present at an infamous Trump Tower meeting in New York City, where Trump’s campaign had been promised dirt from Russians on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. And according to one of Sherman’s GOP sources, Trump Jr. believes it was Kushner who leaked the meeting to the press.

“Don was telling people Jared leaked it to hurt him,” that source alleged to Sherman. “No one could figure out how it leaked. It was a closely guarded secret.” And that source also alleges that Kushner has told representatives of foreign governments “not to work through Don Jr. — and Jared has said it’s on orders from the president.”

Another source told Sherman, “Don doesn’t want to give Jared any excuses to delegitimize him.”