Vance says he's met prospective FBI director candidates with Trump

Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) revealed the Trump team is interviewing candidates to lead the FBI, a sign of plans to boot current Director Christopher Wray.

Vance’s comments came amid a spat on social platform X as he faced criticism for missing a Senate vote in which a judicial nominee of President Biden was approved.

“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 on X.

“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," he added.

Vance later deleted the tweet, in which he called conservative commentator Grace Chong a "mouth breathing imbecile."

Trump has become a vocal critic of the FBI and its leader, who he nominated to the job in 2017.

FBI directors serve 10-year terms, meaning Wray would not ordinarily leave his post until 2027, though the agency head can be removed by the president.

The FBI declined to comment.

Among the names circulating for a possible new director is Kash Patel, a former national security official during the first Trump administration who is also now a board member for Trump’s media company.

Patel would be a controversial pick for the role, a Trump loyalist who sparked internal battles during President-elect Trump's first term and has parroted his views in seeing the FBI as weaponized agency that improperly investigated him.

“The Deep State can not be trusted. They have weaponized the government for their own political and personal agenda,” Patel wrote in an email last week from his foundation, calling the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties “fraud.”

Former FBI Special Agent Daniel Brunner said if Trump chooses loyalist and former Trump administration aide Kash Patel to lead the FBI, it would do “massive damage” to the agency.

“Putting someone like Kash Patel in the position of director of the FBI is, I believe, extremely, extremely dangerous because … his resume isn’t traditional,” Brunner said Sunday.

Updated at 4:22 p.m. EST