US President Donald Trump said Wednesday the investigation into Russian meddling in the US presidential election is bad for the United States and said it's time for the probe to end.
"We are hopefully coming to the end. It is a bad thing for our country ... a very, very bad thing for our country," Trump said.
He again said the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller is a "hoax" created largely by Democrats to help them soften the blow of their loss in the US general election in November 2016.
Trump again said there was no collusion. Trump has repeatedly denied his campaign coordinated with Moscow's efforts to influence the 2016 election.
Questions about the Mueller investigation came at the end of a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump would not say whether he thought ousting Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would be worth the political risk.
"They've been saying I'm going to get rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months, and they're still here."
Trump also said the number of pages of documents handed over to investigators thus far totals about 1.4 million.
He also claimed that no-one has been tougher than he on Russia, but reiterated that he feels it would be a "good thing, not bad" if the US had good relations with Russia.
