President Donald Trump will retain FBI Director James Comey to lead the law enforcement agency under his new administration, according to reports published Tuesday.
Comey told top agents that Trump asked him to stay in his post, according to a New York Times report citing people familiar with the matter.
The Washington Post also reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Comey told people he was asked to retain his job.
Representatives for the White House and FBI declined to comment to the publications.
Comey is under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general for his announcement, ten days prior to Election Day, of a potential development in the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
After Trump’s upset victory in November, his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said that Comey’s announcement “energized” Trump to win the election.
Comey will likely have to perform a delicate balancing act, as his agency is reportedly leading an investigation into whether there were communications between associates of Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. For his part, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, Comey refused to say whether the agency was probing possible links between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
