Trump seeks new FBI head as Comey’s firing grips capital

Bloomberg

The Trump administration has begun its search for a replacement for ousted FBI Director James Comey, with the Justice Department holding interviews for an interim successor as Washington absorbed the shock of the president’s decision to fire the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
The quest for a temporary director may pass over Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, who ascended to the post Tuesday but has faced past criticism from President Donald Trump. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were expected to spend most of Wednesday interviewing candidates, according to a department official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
An acting director was to be named as soon as Wednesday, according to a second Justice Department official. Candidates being interviewed include Adam Lee, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Richmond office; Michael Anderson, special agent in charge of the Chicago office; Paul Abbate, the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of the bureau’s criminal and cyber division; and William Evanina, the national counterintelligence executive at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Finding a permanent replacement who can win Senate confirmation and earn the trust of rank-and-file FBI agents will be a tall order for the White House after Trump’s move seemed to cross a long-standing tradition against political interference with the bureau. Several FBI agents replaced their photos on Facebook with Comey’s and have written that they were outraged by his removal.
Trump isn’t expected to see any candidates for a permanent replacement on Wednesday, according to a White House official. The president will get a list of possible contenders in coming days, the official said, but it’s unclear whether he’ll meet with any of them before leaving on a foreign trip at the end of next week.
‘Beyond Reproach’
Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he called Trump Tuesday night and urged him to nominate “someone who is absolutely beyond reproach and that both sides of the aisle can have complete faith in and the American people will.”
Trump now gets to nominate Comey’s successor while the agency is deep into an investigation of Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign, which includes whether anyone close to Trump colluded with the Russians. Democrats condemned Comey’s dismissal, calling it an effort to cut short the probe and demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor to carry it forward.
According to the White House, though, it wasn’t the Russia investigation that led to Comey’s dismissal. Rosenstein said in a memo that Comey was fired because of his handling of the probe last year into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server — even though the facts of that inquiry were well-known at the time Trump took office and asked Comey to stay on the job. Comey’s testimony before a Senate panel last week — with its implication that he might again disregard the Justice Department’s chain of command as he did in announcing in July that he was closing the Clinton investigation — was the turning point that sealed his removal, according to the first Justice Department official. His testimony took Sessions and Rosenstein by surprise, according to the official, who declined to comment on whether an effort to remove Comey was under way before his testimony.
Trump on Wednesday said he dismissed the FBI chief because,
“He wasn’t doing a good job, Very simple.”
Trump’s Statement
But statements by the president and some of his aides on Tuesday night suggested the Russia investigation had their attention. In his letter to Comey, Trump wrote, “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.” Vice President Mike Pence made the same point on Wednesday morning speaking to reporters at the Capitol.
Sarah Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, dismissed the Russia probe and said Trump’s opponents need to move on.
“When are they gonna let that go?” she said on Fox News Tuesday night. “It’s been going on for nearly a year. Frankly, it’s kinda getting
absurd.”
The New York Times and Washington Post reported that Comey last week requested more Justice Department resources to pursue the investigation. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores denied that Comey sought more money from Rosenstein. However, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said she was aware of Comey’s request.