Will FBI Get A Woman Director? Alice Fisher Among At Least 10 Candidates Considered To Head The Bureau

After firing James Comey from the post of FBI director Tuesday, President Donald Trump began his search for Comey’s replacement. On Saturday, several candidates were interviewed for the role and among them was Alice Fisher, a high-ranking official at Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration.

The FBI has never had a woman director and if Fisher is selected for the role, she would become the first woman to head the bureau.

On Saturday, Trump said, along with his team, he is working to get a new FBI director likely by next week, which is just before he jets off on his first foreign trip since he assumed the office. The president will be visiting the Middle East and Europe on May 19. He was asked by reporters in Virginia whether people should expect the announcement related to the FBI director by Friday, to which he replied: “Even that is possible.”

“I think the process is going to go quickly. Almost all of them [the candidates] are very well-known,” Trump said. “They’ve been vetted over their lifetime essentially, but very well-known, highly respected, really talented people. And that’s what we want for the FBI.”

Fisher was the first candidate to be interviewed for the post of the FBI director. The 50-year-old does not have an experience in the bureau but served as assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department under Bush’s second term as the president. Currently, she is a partner at the Latham & Watkins law firm, where she specializes in white-collar criminal and internal probe.

During her confirmation in 2005, Fisher garnered opposition from Democrats over allegations she was involved in discussions about policies at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At the time, the then Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, blocked her nomination for allegedly attending a meeting about controversial and abusive interrogation tactics used at the U.S. military prison camp. She said she did not recall attending such a meeting. Bush used a “recess appointment” to name Fisher the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division.

Fisher also has the role of deputy special counsel to the Senate special committee to her credit, the committee which investigated former President Bill Clinton’s Whitewater scandal. She was most recently in news when she gave testimony March 23 to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Neil Gorsuch as the Supreme Court judge.

“Judge Gorsuch possesses a keen intellect, commitment to fairness and decency, and a deep and abiding passion for the law. He has always brought a thoughtful, reasoned, and practical analysis to any issue. Further, Judge Gorsuch’s stellar resume demonstrates both a life-long love of learning and an ongoing commitment to teaching and mentoring the next generation,” Fisher wrote in the testimony.

“As a lawyer, Judge Gorsuch is exceptional. As a colleague, he is beloved and respected, with seemingly unlimited reserves of courtesy, kindness, and good humor. … He is a man of the highest personal integrity, deeply dedicated to serving his country, and I cannot think of a better place for him to do so than on the United States Supreme Court,” she added.

Following are other candidates considered for FBI director post, according to the Associated Press.

• Ray Kelly, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department
• J. Michael Luttig, the general counsel for Boeing Corp
• Larry Thompson, deputy attorney general under Bush
• Paul Abbate, a senior official at the FBI responsible for the bureau’s criminal and cyber branch
• Andrew McCabe, FBI’s acting director
• Michael Garcia, former New York prosecutor
• John Suthers, former U.S. attorney and Colorado attorney general
• Adam Lee, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Richmond office, Virginia
• Henry E. Hudon, a federal judge in Richmond
• Frances Townsend, former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Bush