Attorney General William Barr dug his heels in over his declaration that “spying did occur” on President Trump’s 2016 campaign — saying in a new interview that it’s a “perfectly good English word.”

Barr continued to defend his comment, made during testimony last month at a Senate hearing, in a sit-down with CBS News in Alaska.

“I guess it has become a dirty word somehow. It hasn’t ever been for me,” Barr told the network in the interview that aired Friday. “I think there is nothing wrong with spying. The question is always whether it is authorized by law.”

Last month, Barr drew flak for suggesting the Trump campaign was spied on during the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election — a claim he’s since doubled down on as he investigates the origins of the probe.

“You know, it is part of the craziness of the modern day that if a president uses a word, then all of a sudden it becomes off bounds,” he told CBS. “It is a perfectly good English word, I will continue to use it.”

Barr added that “things are just not jiving” when it comes to the origins of the Russia investigation.

“I assumed I’d get answers when I went in, and I have not gotten answers that are, well, satisfactory,” he said. “In fact, I probably have more questions, and that some of the facts that, that I’ve learned don’t hang together with the official explanations of what happened.”