
 
 Joseph I. Lieberman leaves the White House last week after meeting with President Trump. (Olivier Douliery/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) 
 
 President Trump’s drive to find a new FBI director has lost its “Joe-mentum.” Former senator Joseph I. Lieberman today withdrew his name from consideration for the post, citing a conflict of interest because his law firm colleague has signed on to help the White House with the Russia investigations. 
 
 Lieberman had been considered a front-runner and met with Trump on May 17 to discuss succeeding James B. Comey. But Senate Democrats expressed reservations about their former colleague, who served as a Democrat and then as an independent. After Trump hired Marc Kasowitz, a partner in the firm where Lieberman is senior counsel, to help him navigate the investigations into the Trump team’s Russia ties, Lieberman’s prospects for becoming the head of the FBI decreased. 
 
 In a letter to Trump today, he officially took himself out of the running. 
 
 “Just being thought of for this position was a great honor because of my enormous respect for the men and women of the FBI and the critical and courageous work they do in protecting the American people from criminals and terrorists, and upholding our finest values,” he wrote. 
 
 “However, I have decided to withdraw my name from consideration for this nomination. With your selection of Marc Kasowitz to represent you in the various investigations that have begun, I do believe it would be best to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, given my role as a senior counsel in the law firm of which Marc is the senior partner.” 
 
 A former partner in Kasowitz’s law firm, David Friedman, is now Trump’s ambassador to Israel. 
 
 Justice Department officials have continued to meet with potential candidates during Trump’s overseas trip this week. According to reports, candidates include New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers; former federal appellate court judge J. Michael Luttig; Paul Abbate, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch; and Larry Thompson, former deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush. 
 
 Several other candidates have also taken themselves out of consideration, including former assistant attorney general Alice Fisher, Associate Judge Michael Garcia of the New York Court of Appeals, career FBI official Richard McFeely, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Former Sen. Joe Lieberman told MSNBC Thursday that appointing him head of the FBI would have looked “terrible” after President Donald Trump retained an attorney from the law firm where Lieberman works to represent him in the Russia investigation. 
 
 “With everything swirling in Washington, you can’t have a director of the FBI coming from the same law firm as the president’s private lawyer. It looks terrible,” Lieberman said in an interview with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace. 
 
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 The former Connecticut senator and one-time Democratic vice presidential nominee sent the White House a letter Wednesday withdrawing his name from the search to replace former FBI Director James Comey. 
 
 Related: Trump Says Lieberman a Top Pick for FBI Director 
 
 "With your selection of Marc Kasowitz to represent you in the various investigations that have begun, I do believe it would be best to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, given my role as a senior counsel in the law firm of which Marc is the senior partner," Lieberman wrote Trump in the letter. 
 
 Lieberman also said the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Department of Justice’s Russia investigation reassured him the integrity of the agency would remain intact amid the recent turmoil. 
 
 Trump had said last week that Lieberman was a leading candidate to head the bureau, news that did not go over well with Lieberman’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill. 
 
 Lieberman, who unsuccessfully ran as Al Gore's running mate in 2000 and waged his own presidential bid four years later, lost his Democratic Senate primary race in Connecticut in 2006. He went on to win re-election as an independent, and in 2008 endorsed Republican Sen. John McCain for president. 
 
 While Republicans were largely approving of him becoming the next head of the FBI, Democrats said they would like to see a non-politician with a law enforcement background take the job. 
 
 “I was disappointed but you know, I guess when I step back from it I wasn’t surprised because everything is so partisan in Washington,” Lieberman said. “There’s still a group, probably in the far left of the Democratic party, who still doesn’t forgive me.”
– Joe Lieberman, who was at one point considered the front-runner for FBI director, has dropped out of the running. The former senator said he wanted to avoid the "appearance of a conflict of interest" after President Trump hired Marc Kasowitz, who works at the same law firm as Lieberman, to help the White House deal with the Russia investigation, reports the Wall Street Journal. Other candidates, including former Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, have also withdrawn from consideration, but the Justice Department has continued to interview candidates while Trump is on his foreign trip, including former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, reports the Washington Post. Lieberman told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace Thursday that it wouldn't have looked good if he had taken the job, NBC News reports. "With everything swirling in Washington, you can't have a director of the FBI coming from the same law firm as the president's private lawyer. It looks terrible," he said.