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US President Trump considers the 4 candidates for FBI director

US President Trump is considering four candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey

Published May 13,2017
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Four candidates to be FBI director are in line for the first interviews with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, at Justice Department headquarters.

The Trump administration is looking to fill the job after President Donald Trump fired Director James Comey this week.

Among those expected to be coming in Saturday are acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and Alice Fisher, a top Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration.

That's according to two people familiar with the search process who weren't authorized to publicly discuss the deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Saturday's list includes Michael J. Garcia, an associate judge on New York's highest court, and GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate leader and a former state attorney general.

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SEN. 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 GOP 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.

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PAUL ABBATE

Abbate is a senior official at the FBI, currently responsible for the bureau's criminal and cyber branch. He previously led FBI field offices in Washington, one of the agency's largest, and in Detroit. He's been deeply involved for years in FBI efforts to fight terrorism, serving in supervisory roles in Iraq and Afghanistan and later overseeing FBI international terrorism investigations as a section chief. He's been with the FBI for more than 20 years, and is one of the FBI officials who interviewed this week for the role of interim director.

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ALICE FISHER

Currently 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 Justice Department. Fisher faced resistance from Democrats during her confirmation over her alleged participation in discussions about detention policies at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba. She also served as deputy special counsel to the Senate special committee that investigated President Bill Clinton's Whitewater scandal. If selected, she would be the bureau's first female director.

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ANDREW MCCABE

A Duke-educated lawyer, McCabe was named last year as the FBI's deputy director, the No. 2 position in the bureau, overseeing significant investigations and operations. Since joining the FBI more than 20 years ago, he's held multiple leadership positions, including overseeing the FBI's national security branch and its Washington field office. McCabe became acting director after Comey was fired, but has shown a repeated willingness to break from White House explanations of the ouster and its characterizations of the Russia investigation.