Trump administration officials have flatly denied two key allegations surrounding the James Comey firing - that the decision came after he asked for more resources for the FBI's Russian Federation probe, and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein later threatened to resign - after the claims gained traction among Trump critics.
"As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with ideal accuracy!" Trump said. "Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???"
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted the information she and her colleagues offered was consistent.
If a post-inauguration dinner between President Donald Trump and then-FBI director James Comey unfolded the way the President claims it did, then he's got some big problems on his hands, former Justice Department officials and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents say.
"In fact when I made a decision to just do it, I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russian Federation thing with Trump and Russian Federation is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won", he told NBC.
In the termination letter to Mr Comey, Mr Trump said the firing was necessary to restore "public trust and confidence in the FBI".
And faced with a White House that's willing to violate the norms governing presidential involvement in the investigative process, either there will be the forceful pushback from the legislative branch that most Republicans want to avoid or else oversight of the Trump administration will be woefully lacking.
Here is a timeline of explanations provided by the White House and the President since Tuesday. Trump has changed that norm by firing Comey on a thin pretext out of anger over the Russian Federation investigation. "It hasn't recovered from that", Trump explained why he wanted to fire Comey.
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"I don't know if there was collusion or not", Clapper said during an interview Friday with MSNBC. Press Secretary Sean Spicer says "there's no reason to believe he doesn't [have the president's full confidence] at this time".
The White House initially said Trump fired Comey on the recommendation of the top Justice Department officials: Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Fox News quoted a government source as saying they were moving "quickly and expeditiously" to find a replacement, adding: "We're doing our due diligence - we are not going to cut any corners".
Mr Trump said he had asked Mr Comey once over dinner and twice by telephone.
Associates of Mr Comey said they felt comfortable revealing the details of the dinner meeting to The New York Times now that Mr Comey had been fired.
"The Fake Media is working overtime today!" he added.
In his tweet, Trump appeared to be alluding to his own assertion in the NBC interview that Comey approached him with a dinner request in January, and that the then-FBI director told the president during the meal that Trump was not the subject of any FBI investigations. He appeared to contradict the White House this week when he described the inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election as "a highly significant investigation".
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