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Washington – President Obama will announce that his choice to replace outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller on Friday is a former attorney for Bridgewater Associates who worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush. The president’s choice is James Comey, a White House official said. Under fire for collecting phone call and Internet information from Americans, Obama’s choice of Comey -– a former deputy attorney general in a Republican administration — to head the FBI may be a wise choice from a political standpoint. Comey, 52, and Mueller threatened to resign in 2004 after finding out the Bush White House tried to persuade an ill and hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft to reauthorize a warrantless eavesdropping program. After leaving the Justice Department in 2005, Comey went to work as a top executive for the defense contractor Lockheed Martin. In June 2010, he left to take a job at Bridgewater Associates in Westport, a hedge fund that manages $150 billion in global investments. He left Bridgewater in February to teach national security law at Columbia Law School in New York. He also joined the board of HSBC Holdings, a British bank that recently agreed to pay nearly $2 billion to settle federal charges of money laundering. Comey has also served as U.S. Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. |
