Joe Lieberman withdraws from the search for new FBI director

WASHINGTON—Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman has withdrawn from consideration for the role of FBI director, becoming the latest contender to pull out of a search process that President Donald Trump said a week ago was moving quickly.

Lawyers, law enforcement officials, judges and politicians have interviewed either with the Justice Department or the White House for the director’s job, which became open with Trump’s May 9 firing of James Comey.

Lieberman, a former Democratic presidential candidate, interviewed with Trump last week and was acknowledged by the president to be a leading candidate. But the buzz around his candidacy fizzled after Trump left for his foreign trip last Friday without naming his pick.

He likely would have faced a challenging confirmation process because of his lack of law enforcement experience and opposition from many in Congress to placing a political figure atop the FBI. Though a longtime Democratic senator, he almost certainly would have run into Democratic opposition in the Senate over his support for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 and his more recent words of praise for Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Lieberman withdrew himself from consideration in a letter to the White House made public Thursday. He said that though he was honored to have been considered, he wanted to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest given Trump’s hiring of one of Lieberman’s law partners, Marc Kasowitz, to represent him in an ongoing federal investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The White House declined to comment.

Several other people interviewed for the job have also withdrawn from consideration, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, former U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia and Alice Fisher, the former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.