President-elect Donald Trump is planning to name a replacement for the FBI director, even though the current director, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Trump during his first term in 2017 and is serving a ten-year term that doesn't expire until 2027.

The revelation that Trump plans to replace Wray came in a since-deleted X post from Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), according to Salon.

Vance's likely unintentional admission of Trump's intent to pick a new FBI director came as part of his response to criticism for missing last-minute confirmation votes in the lame-duck Democrat-controlled Senate on some of President Joe Biden's remaining judicial nominees.

Vance's since-deleted post

HuffPost reported that Sen. Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the secretary of State-designate, among others, were sharply criticized on Tuesday by Grace Chong, a member of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast team, for missing key confirmation votes in the Senate on some of President Biden's controversial progressive judicial nominees.

In response to Chong's critique, Vance called her a "mouth breathing imbecile who attacks those of us in the fight rather than make herself useful," and went on to explain how Biden's nominees would have been confirmed by the Democratic majority regardless of whether every Republican senator had shown up and voted against them.

"When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI director," Vance continued.

The incoming vice president added, "I think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45. But that’s just me."

ICYMI: @JDVance’s deleted tweet: pic.twitter.com/GxuHaZh8iq

— Grace Chong 🇺🇸 (@gc22gc) November 21, 2024

Trump no longer approves of Wray

The posts from both Chong and Vance were later deleted but not before they were saved by screenshots or controversy erupted about the apparent plan for President-elect Trump to replace FBI Director Wray.

The New York Post reported that Trump appointed Wray in 2017 to replace fired FBI Director James Comey but has since grown disillusioned with his choice after observing how Wray has led the increasingly politicized and weaponized bureau over the past several years.

Trump has taken issue with Wray's alleged "lying to Congress" about President Biden's declining cognitive state, how the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022 in search of classified documents, how the bureau has gone after nonviolent Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendants for misdemeanor crimes, to say nothing of the lingering distrust with how the pre-Wray FBI had gone after him and his campaign in 2016.

Possible replacements under consideration

The Post noted that the two most likely candidates to replace Wray as FBI director are former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who led the House Intelligence Committee for four years and just narrowly lost a Senate bid, and Kash Patel, a loyal former National Security adviser.

Patel, according to Newsweek, is a former public defender turned federal prosecutor who served as senior counsel for the House Intelligence Committee under former Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and was one of the first to begin the unraveling of the false Russian collusion narrative against Trump in 2017.

He ended up as part of Trump's National Security Council near the end of the first term, has been involved as a board member and consultant for Trump's company that owns Truth Social, and has written books about taking on and reforming the "Deep State" that, per the Post, Trump has acknowledged will serve as a "blueprint" for his second term in office.