Comey memos show Trump obsessed with Russia probe

US President Donald Trump repeatedly complained to FBI director James Comey in early 2017 that the Russia meddling investigation was a cloud over his young administration, weeks before firing him, leaked memorandums showed Thursday.

Trump "said he was trying to run the country and the cloud of this Russia business was making that difficult," Comey wrote in a memo on a conversation they had on March 30, 2017.

Eleven days later, Trump again pressed Comey about the issue. The president told Comey that "he is trying to do work for the country, visit with foreign leaders, and any cloud, even a little cloud, gets in the way of that," Comey wrote, referring to "the Russia thing."

But Comey never committed to easing off the investigation, which continues to examine a number of suspicious contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Weeks after their last conversation, on May 9, Trump fired Comey, saying in an interview two days later that he decided to dismiss the FBI chief in part out of unhappiness over the Russia probe.