President Donald Trump said Thursday that he was going to fire "showboat" FBI Director James Comey "regardless" of what the Justice Department recommended, directly contradicting what the White House said a day earlier.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News' Lester Holt, Trump said the FBI had been in "turmoil."

"Look, he's a showboat, he's a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago — it hasn't recovered from that," Trump said at the White House.

White House officials are scrambling to justify the timing of Comey's termination, insisting that he lost his job because of his conduct in the probe into Hillary Clinton's emails last year. They said it had nothing to do with the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which Comey first revealed publicly in March and includes any possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia.