President Donald Trump On His Firing Of James Comey (Extended Exclusive) | NBC Nightly News

look he's a showboat he's a grandstander the fbi has been in turmoil you know that i know that everybody knows that you take a look at the fbi a year ago it was in virtual turmoil less than a year ago it hasn't recovered from that monday you met with the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein rosenstein right did you ask for a recommendation uh what i did is i was going to fire comey my decision it was not you had made the decision before they came out i i was going to fire comey uh i there's no good time to do it by the way uh they because in your letter you said i i accepted accepted their recommendations yeah well they had already made the decision oh i was going to fire regardless of recognition he made a recommendation he's highly respected very good guy very smart guy the democrats like him the republicans like him uh he made a recommendation but regardless of recommendation i was going to fire comey 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 have won and the reason they should have won it is the electoral college is almost impossible for a republican to win very hard because you start off at such a disadvantage so everybody was thinking they should have won the election this was an excuse for having lost an election are you angry angry with mr comey because of his russia investigation i just want somebody that's competent i am a big fan of the fbi i love the fbi are you a fan of him taking up that investigation i think that about the hillary clinton investigation about the russia investigation and possible links between look let me tell you as far as i'm concerned i want that thing to be absolutely done properly when i did this now i said i probably maybe will confuse people maybe i'll expand that you know i'll lengthen the time because it should be over with it should in my opinion should have been over with a long time ago because all it is is an excuse but i said to myself i might even lengthen out the investigation but i have to do the right thing for the american people he's the wrong man for that position let me ask you about your termination letter to mr comey you're right i greatly appreciate you informing me on three separate occasions that i am not under investigation why did you put that in there because he told me that i mean he told me he told you one under investigation i've heard that from others i think was it a phone call did you meet face to face i had a dinner with him he wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on we had a very nice dinner at the white house very early on a dinner was arranged i think he asked for the dinner and he wanted to stay on as the fbi head and i said i'll you know consider we'll see what happens but we had a very nice dinner and at that time he told me you are not under investigation which i knew anyway that was one meeting what was it first of all when you're under investigation you're giving all sorts of documents and everything i knew i wasn't under and i heard it was stated at the committee at some committee level that i wasn't number one so that didn't come then during the phone call he said it and then during another phone call he said it so he said it once at dinner and then he said it twice during phone calls did you call him uh in one case i called him in one case he called him and did you ask am i under investigation i actually asked him yes i said if it's possible would you let me know am i under investigation he said you are not under investigation but he's given sworn testimony that there is an ongoing investigation into the trump campaign and possible collusion with the russian government you were the centerpiece of the trump campaign i know that i'm not under investigation me personally i'm not talking about campaigns i'm not talking about anything else i'm not under investigation did you ask him to drop the investigation no no did anyone from the white house no in fact i want the investigation speeded up did anyone from the white house ask him to end the investigation why would he do that any surrogates on behalf of the white house not that i know of look i want to find out if there was a problem with an election having to do with russia or by the way anybody anybody else any other country and i want that to be so strong and so good and i want it to happen i also want to have a really competent capable director he's not he's a show boater he's not my man or not my man i didn't appoint him he was appointed long before me but i want somebody who's going to do a great job and i will tell you we're looking at candidates right now who could be spectacular and that's what i want for the fbi what you said a moment ago about supporting the idea of investigation a lot of people would find it hard to believe that the man who just said that tweeted very recently it's a total hoax it's a taxpayer charade oh i think that looking into me and the campaign look i have nothing to do this was set up by the democrats there is no collusion between me and my campaign and the russians the other thing is the russians did not affect the vote and everybody seems to think that there is an investigation underway though an fbi investigation is that a sure well i don't know if it's an fbi or if it's there's so many investigations i don't know if it's an fbi investigation or if it's a congress if it's the senate well james comey testified there was an fbi yeah but i think they're also helping the house and the senate so you probably have better fbi but you have house you have senate they have other investigations but when you put out tweets it's a total hoax it's a taxpayer charade and you're looking for a new fbi director are you not sending that person a message to layoff no i'm not doing that i think that we have to get back to work but i want to find out i want to get to the bottom if russia hacked if russia did anything having to do with our election i want to know about it well there's already there's already intelligence from virtually every intelligence agency that yes that happened i'll tell you this if russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections i think it's a horrible thing and i want to get to the bottom of it and i want to make sure it will never ever happen were you angry with james comey when he went public and said he can't support your unsubstantiated charges of wiretapping that your predecessor wired empty i was surprised he said it but i wasn't angry there's a big thing going on right now which is spying and it's you can call it anything you want the unmasking and the spying and to me that's the big story right now that's a very very big story you didn't take that as a sign of disloyalty that he came out and no i don't know i didn't i don't think of it as loyalty i mean i want whoever the director is i want him to do the right thing and what about when he went public and said that there was in fact an fbi investigation looking at your campaign and russia did that angry i asked that because there is you know i sense that you i was building anger no no no i know every once in a while you'll see that in the newspaper anger somebody will report or they'll have false sources that maybe don't exist because of the media the way the media is now i will tell you i think that um i want very simply a great fbi director and will you expect that they would they would continue on with this investment oh yeah sure i expect that general flynn is a part of this investigation as you know sally yates recently testified that the white house was notified that he had been compromised he was at risk of being blackmailed it was 18 days later that he was finally fired during that 18 days he had access i assumed all the nation's top secrets one day you meet on the issue of comey right and you fire him in a humiliating way well he's sitting in a room with his colleagues and it's appearing on the tv because my white house counsel don mcgahn came back to me and did not sound like an emergency of any it didn't make it sound like he was you know and she actually didn't make it sound that way either in the hearings the other day like it had to be done immediately this man has served for many years he's a general he's in my opinion a very good person i believe that it would be very unfair to hear from somebody who we don't even know and immediately run out and fire a general acting attorney general at the time uh my white house counsel came to me they had i believe two meetings and we ultimately fired but we fired for a different reason you're talking about general flynn general flynn because because of lying to the vice president yeah but everything plays in everything plays into it but we fired him because he said something to the vice president that was not so did you know that he had had that received payments from the russian government that he had received payments in the turkish year no but obama perhaps knew because he had clearance from the obama administration and his clear and this is something they never want to report he had clearance from the obama administration the highest clearance you can have and i think it's a very unfair thing that the media doesn't talk about that you know you're talking about 2015. i don't know that i knew him in 2015. the senate intelligence committee wants in from information from the treasury department's financial crimes unit about your finances your your business is financed can you tell us whether you your family your businesses your surrogates have accepted any investments any loans from russian individuals yeah in fact i just sent a letter to lindsey graham from one of the most prestigious law firms in the country a tremendous highly rated law firm that i have nothing to do with russia i have no investments in russia none whatsoever i don't have property in russia a lot of people thought i owned office buildings in moscow i don't have property in russia and i am in very i mean i'm in total compliance in every way now i have to tell you i file documents hundreds of pages worth of documents with the federal elections bureau everybody's seen them i built a great company but i'm not involved with russia i have had dealings over the years where i sold a house to a very wealthy russian many years ago i had the miss universe pageant which i owned for quite a while i had it in moscow long time ago but other than that i have nothing to do with russia and one last question on this matter did you and i have a certified letter just so you understand i'm not just saying that i've given the letter i've given the letter to senator lindsey graham he has the letter and i think frankly if i assume he's going to give the letter out but it says i am not involved in russia no loans no nothing did you worry at all when you made the decision to fire comey when you did the day before lavrov was here in the white house and the russian ambassador did you think through the optics of the way this would look i never thought about it it was set up a while ago and frankly i could have waited but what difference does it make i'm not looking for cosmetics i'm looking to do a great job for the country i'm looking to create jobs i'm looking to create strength and security i'm looking to have strong borders i'm looking for things like that i think it's really a good thing that i meet with people now this is a public meeting because you know when you cover this the people watching may say oh he met with lebron well this was announced that i'm meeting with labruff just like a number of days ago i spoke at a very good conversation very public in the sense that everybody knew this was taking place i meet i talk all the time just spoke with the head of the new head of south korea who just got elected i speak with the head of india i speak with the head of china i have to speak with putin also it's called russia but when i spoke with putin he asked me whether or not i would see lavrov now what a way should i say no i'm not going to see him i said i will see him during that discussion with lavrov i think we had a great discussion having to do with syria having to do with the ukraine and maybe that discussion will lead to a lot less people getting killed and will lead ultimately to peace so i'm ver i'm okay with those discussions last year i think it's a good thing not a bad thing a nbc news fans thanks for checking out our youtube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews show highlights and digital exclusives thanks for watching

Channel: NBC News

Views: 1,128,046

Keywords: NBC Nightly News, Nightly News, NBC, Lester Holt, NBC News, Breaking News, US News, World News, Politics News, Current Events, Top Stories, donald trump exclusive, donald trump nbc interview, donald trump, president trump, trump, james comey, james comey fired, comey, comey fired, FBI, FBI director, FBI director fired, Deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein, russia, russia investigation, russia probe, trump russia ties, russia ties, russian connection, election hacking, fake news

Id: 5Wvuw_Zmubg

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Fri May 12 2017