James Comey, formerly of the Justice Department, has been nominated to head the FBI.
“I want to commend the president for the choice of Jim Comey as the next director of the FBI,” current Director Robert S. Mueller said in a press release.
Comey is best known for a mediating a showdown between White House officials and ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004. The officials wanted Ashcroft to renew a no-warrant wiretapping program. Comey played an important role in upholding the wiretapping program.
In 2007, Comey told Senate Judiciary Committee that he thought that the wiretapping program was so questionable that he refused to approve it when he was acting Attorney General while Ashcroft was in the hospital. As soon as he learned that White House officials were going to Ashcroft’s hospital room, despite the fact that his wife instructed no visitors were allowed, he headed straight to the hospital to stop them.
"That night was probably the most difficult night of my professional life," Comey told the Associated Press.
He will serve as FBI chief for ten years if he is approved by the Senate. Robert Muller, the current FBI chief, will retire in September. Republicans are likely to question him about his ties to Wall Street and his experience as a hedge fund manager.