US President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.
White House officials on Friday said the president was moving expeditiously to find an interim FBI director along with a permanent replacement for Comey, who was fired on Tuesday. Four candidates — Texas Senator John Cornyn, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, attorney Alice Fisher and judge Michael Garcia — were scheduled to have interviews yesterday.
The list also includes South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy, former Michigan representative Mike Rogers and former New York City Police commissioner Ray Kelly, according to two White House officials briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
The 11 candidates under consideration as a permanent replacement for Comey:
JOHN CORNYN
Cornyn is the No. 2 Senate Republican and a former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court justice. He has been a member of the Senate Republican leadership team for a decade and serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the aftermath of Comey’s dismissal, Cornyn said Trump was “within his authority” to fire him and said it would not affect the investigation of possible Russian ties to Trump’s presidential campaign.
TREY GOWDY
The South Carolina Republican is best known for leading the congressional inquiry into the deadly attacks on a US facility in Benghazi, Libya, a panel that in 2015 oversaw a lengthy grilling of then-US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton.
A former federal prosecutor and state attorney, Gowdy was elected to Congress in the 2010 Tea Party wave and has focused on law enforcement issues.
MIKE ROGERS
Rogers is the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He served Michigan in Congress for more than a decade before stepping down in 2015. Rogers worked for the FBI as a special agent based in Chicago in the 1990s and briefly advised Trump’s transition team on national security issues.
RAY KELLY
Kelly was commissioner of the New York City Police Department for more than a decade, serving two mayors. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he created the first counterterrorism bureau of any municipal police department and oversaw a drastic reduction in crime.
However, Kelly also came under fire for his use of aggressive police tactics, including a program that spied on Muslims and a dramatic spike in the use of stop-and-frisk, which disproportionately affected non-white New Yorkers.
J. MICHAEL LUTTIG
Luttig, the general counsel for Boeing Corp, is viewed as a conservative legal powerhouse from his tenure as a judge on the 4th Circuit US Court of Appeals.
LARRY THOMPSON
A deputy attorney general under then-US president George W. Bush, Thompson served as the department’s No. 2 from 2001 to 2003.
PAUL ABBATE
Abbate is a senior official at the FBI responsible for the bureau’s criminal and cyberbranch. He previously led FBI field offices in Washington.
ALICE FISHER
A partner at the law firm Latham & Watkins specializing in white-collar criminal and internal investigations, Fisher formerly served as assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice.
ANDREW MCCABE
A Duke University-educated lawyer, McCabe was named last year as the FBI’s deputy director, the No. 2 position in the bureau.
MICHAEL GARCIA
A former New York prosecutor, Garcia has served as an associate judge on the New York Court of Appeals.
JOHN SUTHERS
A former US attorney and Colorado attorney general, Suthers was elected mayor of Colorado Springs in 2015.
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