Ayesha Rascoe

Updated at 5:19 p.m. ET

President Trump expressed optimism for upcoming talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying of a potential agreement to denuclearize the Korean peninsula "I hope I'm able to do [it] for the world."

President Trump will welcome French President Emmanuel Macron to the United States for an official state visit on Monday, in the latest sign of goodwill between the two leaders.

The two got off to a rocky start after sharing a tense handshake at their first meeting at a NATO summit in Brussels last May. But since that shaky beginning, Trump and Macron have developed a surprisingly collegial bond.

President Trump will not meet the federal deadline to file his 2017 tax return in April, the White House said.

"The president filed an extension for his 2017 tax return, as do many Americans with complex returns," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Sanders said Trump will file his returns by Oct. 15, the deadline set by the IRS for taxpayers who ask for extensions.

Trump has bucked decades of tradition by not releasing his tax returns to the public.

The hits keep coming for EPA chief Scott Pruitt, with a new report from a government watchdog agency concluding that the Environmental Protection Agency broke the law when it spent more than $43,000 to build a soundproof privacy booth in Pruitt's office.

The Government Accountability Office found that the EPA spent the money without providing advance notice to Congress, as required by law.

The White House sought to discredit James Comey ahead of the release of his memoir next week, lashing out at the former FBI director in deeply personal terms on Friday.

Calling Comey a "disgraced partisan hack," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters that the American people would be able to see through the "lies" in Comey's book, which offers a scathing assessment of President Trump.

"This is nothing more than a poorly executed PR stunt by Comey to desperately rehabilitate his tattered reputation," Sanders said at a briefing.

Updated at 9:58 p.m. ET

President Trump believes Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller has gone too far in his probe of potential ties between Trump's campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Tuesday.

Her statement to reporters did little to tamp down speculation that Trump may seek to fire Mueller — an authority that Sanders says Trump enjoys.

President Trump has canceled his planned trip to Latin America this week.

The commander in chief and his advisers are deciding on a response to the Syrian government's alleged chemical weapons attack on its own people. And closer to home, the office of the president's personal lawyer was raided by the FBI on Monday.

So Trump is staying put, the White House says.