President Donald Trump doesn’t regret firing former FBI director James Comey, despite the controversy that it brought to his young presidency.

“I think I did a great thing for the American people,” Trump said, during an interview with New York Times reporters at the White House.

Trump recalled the moment that James Comey showed him the infamous “dossier” of outrageous accusations of his actions in Russia, calling it “really phony stuff.”

“It was so wrong, and I was with groups of people. It was so wrong that I really didn’t, I didn’t think about motive,” he said.

Later, Trump said he believed that Comey showed him the dossier for leverage.

“He shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Trump said.

“As leverage?” one reporter asked.

“Yeah, I think so. In retrospect,” Trump replied.

Trump accused Comey of illegally leaking information about their conversations, pointing out that Comey admitted that he did it to get a special prosecutor appointed for the Russia investigation.

“He illegally leaks, and everyone thinks it is illegal, and by the way, it looks like it’s classified and all that stuff,” he said. “So he got — not a smart guy — he got tricked into that, because they didn’t even ask him that question.”