In the days before his firing by President Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey told US lawmakers he had asked the Justice Department for more resources to pursue the bureau's investigation into Russia's interference in last year's presidential election, three US officials said today.
The officials said Comey met last week with Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, to make the request. Comey then alerted lawmakers with ties to the concurrent congressional investigations into Russia's meddling, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity in order to disclose the private conversations.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said it was false that Comey had asked Rosenstein for money for the Russia investigation.
The revelations raise new questions about what prompted Trump's decision to fire Comey. The White House has cited a memo from Rosenstein, in which he criticizes Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's email practices.
Rosenstein's memo makes no mention of the FBI's Russia investigation, which is probing both Russia's hacking of Democratic groups last year and whether Trump campaign associates had ties to Moscow's election interference.
Trump defended his decision today, asserting in a flurry of tweets that both Democrats and Republicans "will be thanking me" for his action. He did not mention any effect the dismissal might have on the FBI and congressional investigations into contacts between his 2016 election campaign and Russia.
"He wasn't doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job," Trump said in brief remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, where he was joined by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The White House said Trump had been considering firing Comey since the election.
"I think it has been an erosion of confidence," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. She said Rosenstein's memo, as well as Comey's own testimony last week on his handling of the Clinton investigation, pushed Trump toward a final decision.
The abrupt firing of Comey threw into question the future of the FBI's investigation and immediately raised suspicions of an underhanded effort to stymie a probe that has shadowed the administration from the outset. Trump has ridiculed the investigations as "a hoax" and denied any campaign involvement with the Russians.
Sanders said the White House would "encourage" the FBI to complete the Russia investigation. She said the president continued to oppose appointing a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation.
Democrats compared Comey's ouster to President Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate investigation and renewed calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor.
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