Sarah Huckabee Sanders stepping down as White House press secretary

WASHINGTON - Sarah Huckabee Sanders is stepping down as the White House press secretary.

President Trump announced the news on Twitter Thursday and said she will leave her position at the end of June.

“After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas,” Trump wrote. “She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas - she would be fantastic.”

“Sarah, thank you for a job well done,” the president added.

Sanders has served in the Trump administration since he took office in January 2017. She began her role as press secretary since July 2017, the third female to hold the position in history.

A replacement was not immediately named.

The daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sanders moved her young family to Washington to be part of the administration. She joined the Trump campaign not long after her father's second presidential bid — which she managed — fizzled out in the 2016 Iowa caucuses. She said she was drawn to Trump's message of economic populism and his outsider attitude.

Sanders has been one of the president's closest and most trusted White House aides and one of the few remaining who worked on his campaign.

Her tenure was marked by a breakdown in regular White House press briefings and questions about the administration's credibility.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's revealed that Sanders admitted to investigators that she had made an unfounded claim that "countless" FBI agents had reached out to express support for Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.

This story was reported from Los Angeles. The Associated Press contributed.