Trump to move quickly to replace Federal Bureau of Investigation director

His name was floated as a possible replacement for Director Robert Mueller in 2013.

Mr Rosenstein likewise documented concerns from attorneys-general from both parties.

“We can make a fast decision”, Trump said, explaining the FBI’s vetting process. He served as the USA attorney in Manhattan from 2005 to 2008, and previously held high-level positions in the Commerce Department, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. More than half the Senate Republicans have already raised concerns about how Mr Comey was sacked. The firing drew a wave of criticism in large part because the FBI has been investigating whether election meddling by Russian Federation involved people in Trump’s presidential campaign, and Trump said in an interview with NBC that the investigation factored into his decision to fire Comey. He became a hero to animal rights activists when he sentenced National Football League star Michael Vick to almost two years in prison in 2007 for running a dogfighting ring.

A crowd of more than double that size filled an outdoor stadium on campus to welcome just the second sitting president to address the university’s commencement, after George H W Bush in 1990. The president did not say whether these candidates are being vetted for the interim director or permanent director position.

McCabe arrived at the Justice Department in a motorcade Saturday afternoon.

The blowback against the firing of Comey angered the increasingly frustrated president, who made the decision after consulting only a small group of advisers, anxious the news would leak out.

-Adam Lee, special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Richmond, Virginia.

President Donald Trump will read reports and recommendations from the interviews and then meet with a few leading candidates himself, the official said.

Trump had claimed that Comey told him three times that he wasn’t “under investigation”. There, he led investigations of government officials and civil rights violations. John Cornyn of Texas.

In late October, Huckabee Sanders asked people to imagine a world in which a Republican presidential candidate was under FBI investigation. Even after the Obama White House and Justice Department leaders said there was no evidence to support the assertion, Comey repeated it as a possibility.

White House officials said Friday the president was moving expeditiously to find an interim Federal Bureau of Investigation director along with a permanent replacement for Comey, who was sacked Tuesday.

The job requires Senate confirmation.

Critics have assailed Trump for abruptly dismissing Comey, who was leading the agency’s investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 USA election, and possible ties between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

There is one thing that Republicans and Democrats do seem to agree on and that’s support for an independent commission or special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s involvement in the election. “Based on my evaluation, and for the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General in the attached memorandum, I have concluded that a fresh start is needed at the leadership of the FBI”, Sessions’ letter said.

Asked whether Trump had fired Comey in order to obstruct ongoing investigations, Warner said “what was going on the president’s mind, I don’t know”.

Much of Mr Trump’s ire has been focused on the communications team, all of whom were caught off guard by Mr Comey’s sacking.

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who is overseeing his department’s Russian Federation probe, has not signaled he plans to appoint an independent investigator. In the United States, the episode has brought comparisons with the dismissal of top justice department officials by former President Richard M. Nixon in October 1973 in order to scuttle the processes that eventually blew up as the Watergate scandal, which led to moves to impeach Mr Nixon and his eventual resignation.

The FBI has never had a female director.

Hours before Trump’s tweet, the New York Times reported that Comey twice refused the President’s request to pledge loyalty to him during a January dinner.