Vice President-elect JD Vance revealed in a since-deleted post on X that he and President-elect Donald Trump are interviewing candidates for FBI director, which all but confirms that the current director, Christopher Wray, an appointee from Trump's first term in office, is about to get fired.
The post came shortly after the Wall Street Journal editorial board criticized Vance for missing Senate votes while President Joe Biden's judicial nominees get through the upper chamber.
“When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director,” Vance wrote. “I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45. But that’s just me.”
That FBI director is presumably not Wray, who would not need to interview for a post that he already holds. Wray, a Republican who served in former President George W. Bush's administration, was first appointed by Trump in 2017 to replace former FBI Director James Comey. But Trump has since soured on Wray, whose bureau has been arrested scores of people who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Following the 2020 election, the FBI also conducted a search for classified documents that Trump stashed at his Mar-a-Lago estate, further angering the president-elect. In July, Trump called for Wray's resignation, accusing of him of lying about President Joe Biden's mental fitness during a congressional hearing.
The names being floated for a replacement include former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official and hardline loyalist.
“Putting someone like Kash Patel in the position of director of the FBI is, I believe, extremely, extremely dangerous,” Daniel Brunner, a former FBI agent, told CNN on Sunday.
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