Speaking to reporters during a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump praised his pick to head the FBI and defended Donald Trump Jr. for taking a meeting with a Russian lawyer offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
"I believe that we will have a great FBI Director, I think he's doing really well and we're very proud of that choice. I think I've done a great service to the country by choosing him [former federal prosecutor Christopher Wray], he will make us all proud," Trump said.
During his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Wray said he does not believe Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election is a witch hunt as President Trump has repeatedly claimed.
"As far as my son is concerned, my son is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a goverment lawyer but a Russian lawyer. It was a short meeting, a meeting that went very very quickly, very fast," Trump said. "I think from a practical standpoint most people would've taken that meeting. It's called opposition research or even research into your opponent...that's very standard in politics. Politics is not the nicest business in the world but it's very standard that they have information and you take the information."
Trump also said adoption was discussed during the meeting, but it was not. Trump Jr. originally said the meeting was about adoption, but later admitted and confirmed through the release of personal emails that it was really about obtaining information on Hillary Clinton from a Russian government source.
During an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity earlier this week, Trump Jr. said in retrospect, he would have done things differently.