President Trump denied in a tweet on Thursday that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of the Russia investigation and blamed the media for “pushing that narrative.”
“Not that it matters but I never fired James Comey because of Russia! The Corrupt Mainstream Media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true!,” the president posted on his Twitter account.
That contradicts what Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt during an interview on May 11, 2017.
Trump said that despite Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s recommendation to fire Comey, who was then heading up the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, he was going to dump the G-man anyway, “knowing there was no good time to do it.”
”And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, ’You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won,'” he told Holt in the interview.
Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017, and Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as the special counsel to take over the Russia investigation on May 17.