Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Trump expected to visit FBI after James Comey firing

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it's "very likely" President Donald Trump will visit the FBI in "the next few days" amid the furor sparked by his decision to fire the bureau's director, Jim Comey, on Tuesday.

Sanders, speaking Thursday on "CBS This Morning," said Trump decided to dismiss Comey this week after a "consistent erosion of confidence in his ability to do his job," and that similar sentiment was evident in the bureau's rank-and-file.

"Let's not forget there was a near uprising after Comey from members of the FBI," the deputy press secretary said. "This isn't just about the president losing confidence. The rank-and-file members within the FBI had lost confidence in the director."

While Sanders reiterated her insistence that Comey's termination had nothing to do with the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign, she said Comey had become a "much bigger distraction" than the investigation itself was, and noted his appearance before a Senate panel last week required formal correction.

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"This is something, frankly, after Wednesday's testimony, [Trump] was very engaged on and certainly he had been pushed to the point where he was ready to make that decision," she said. "He had a conversation on Monday with the attorney general [Jeff Sessions] and deputy attorney general [Rod Rosenstein] and asked them for their thoughts, their feedback."

Sanders also said Comey's dismissal would not interrupt the Russia investigation.

"Any investigation taking place on Monday is still taking place today," she said. "Nothing has changed in that process."

"Frankly, we're ready for those things to go forward and come to their full completion and so that we can all move on," she said. "We're extremely confident that when this comes to conclusion, that everyone will continue to see what they've been seeing and we've been saying for the last 11 months. There was no collusion between the president and Russia."

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