Ex-senator Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat turned independent, is the leading candidate for the vacant post of FBI director, US President Donald Trump says.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that he was "very close" to announcing his pick.
Lieberman, the left-leaning Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in 2000 who later was re-elected to the Senate as an independent, met with Trump on Wednesday at the White House.
Considered a moderate with ties to members of both parties in Congress, Lieberman was state attorney general from 1983-89 in Connecticut before being elected to the US Senate from 1989-2013.
Trump said that "the people in the FBI will be very, very thrilled" with his choice to lead the law enforcement and counter-intelligence agency.
Last week, the president justified his May 9 firing of FBI director James Comey based on a Justice Department memo accusing Comey of mishandling the 2015-16 investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's use of private email.
Opposition Democrats immediately accused Trump of seeking to impede the FBI's investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which extended to activities of White House national security advisor Michael Flynn, who was fired in February for making misleading statements about his Russian contacts.
Later, Trump said he had been planning for months to sack Comey.
