Washington (CNN) Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said he never felt during his tenure that President Donald Trump was angling to remove former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel.

"I never felt, of all the things we went through in the West Wing, I never felt that the President was going to fire the special counsel," Priebus said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The New York Times reported that Trump directed Mueller's firing last June only to have White House counsel Don McGahn refuse the order. The President denied late last month that he ever called for Mueller's firing.

Priebus, who was chief of staff from the beginning of the administration until late July, said Trump had made it clear he was concerned about "conflicts of interest he felt that the special counsel had."

"Perhaps someone interpreted that to mean something else," Priebus said.

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