know, spiral this thing out of control. >> of course, the white house is not disputing those comments as reported in the "new york times," and i guess there are a lot of americans who are looking at this growing body of information, and wondering what exactly is going on here. we have the comments that he made to the russian officials according to that document. president trump recently told nbc's lester holt the russia investigation was on his mind when he made the decision to fire director comey. take a listen. >> 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. >> so we have that. we have what he told the russians according to that document, a source close to comey tells us president trump urged the fbi director to back off investigating michael flynn, this is in a comey memo, "i hope