President-elect Donald Trump "has made his position very clear as it relates to Kash Patel replacing Christopher Wray" as FBI director, said Corey Lewandowski, senior adviser to Trump.
"Christopher Wray has the opportunity to resign at his prerogative, or he can be fired at the president's prerogative," Lewandowski said Monday during an appearance on Newsmax's "National Report."
"And, yes, he has three years left on his term. But it's also the ability for the incoming president to select his own people."
"That is true with other positions in the government as well. And the president coming to Washington, D.C., with a mandate should have the Cabinet around him that the American people have voted on and that he has chosen to make sure that we're implementing the policies that are going to put America first," he added.
Trump said on Saturday he wanted former national security official and loyalist Patel to lead the FBI.
Patel, who during Trump's first term advised both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, has previously called for stripping the FBI of its intelligence-gathering role and purging its ranks of any employee who refuses to support Trump's agenda.
"The biggest problem the FBI has had, has come out of its intel shops. I'd break that component out of it. I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state," Patel said in a September interview on the conservative "Shawn Ryan Show."
"And I'd take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You're cops. Go be cops."
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