Trump meets two candidates for FBI chief

Washington, May 31 (IANS) US President Donald Trump has met two candidates to head the FBI at the White House, presidential spokesman Sean Spicer said.

The two candidates are Chris Wray, who served as assistant attorney general from 2003-2005, and John Pistole, the former head of the Transportation Security Administration who also served as deputy FBI chief from 2004-2010, Spicer said on Tuesday, Efe news reported.

"The president will be meeting with two additional candidates this afternoon, both Chris Wray and John Pistole," Spicer told reporters at his daily press briefing.

"When the president feels as though he's met with the right candidate he'll let us know," he said.

Currently, Wray is a partner at the law firm of King & Spalding, where he heads a group involved in government investigations.

Meanwhile, Pistole, who left the government in 2014, served at the FBI under Robert Mueller, whom the Justice Department on May 17 named special counsel for the investigation into Russian involvement in the November presidential election and possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign to favor the mogul.

Mueller was succeeded at the FBI by James Comey, who was abruptly fired by Trump on May 9, a decision that ignited a political firestorm in Washington.

Finding a new FBI director has become an issue of crucial importance for the White House, which has not clearly explained why, how and when Trump made the decision to fire Comey, who at the time was heading the agency's investigation into the links between the Kremlin and the president.

The favorite so far to take over the FBI had been former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who on May 25 told the White House that he was not interested in the post.

Besides Lieberman, Trump has interviewed three other candidates for FBI chief: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who took over from Comey, former FBI agent Richard McFeely and Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma.