FBI director?
Sen. John Cornyn is reportedly one of a dozen candidates being considered to head the FBI.
Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is under consideration by President Donald Trump to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey, according to people close to the discussions.
A former Texas attorney general, Cornyn is one of nearly a dozen candidates who include acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
The 65-year-old senator, who was first elected to the Senate in 2002 and serves as majority whip, would not comment on whether he had spoken to the White House about the position when contacted Friday.
“I have the distinct privilege of serving 28 million Texans in the United States Senate, and that is where my focus remains,” Cornyn said in a statement released by his office.
The White House declined to comment.
Speculation over who will take over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency follows Trump’s surprising decision earlier this week to fire Comey in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether there was collusion between Trump’s campaign staff and Russian hackers who infiltrated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server ahead of the November election.
Whether Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would want the FBI position was unclear. For now, though, he is viewed as a long shot to takeover the FBI, with Kelly and Rogers the likely frontrunners, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
“One of the difficulties Senator Cornyn faces is there’s going to be at least some resistance to having someone in the position with a clear partisan profile. There’s a belief the FBI director should at least nominally be politically independent,” he said. “Also, he’s perhaps one of the few individuals for whom FBI director could be construed as a step down as opposed to a step up.”
Cornyn’s seat is not up for re-election until 2020, and he is considered a potential successor to the 75-year-old McConnell, should he step down.
Other names under consideration by Trump to head the FBI include Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who led the congressional probe into the attack on a U.S. diplomatic base in Benghazi, Libya; and Larry Thompson, former deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.