Former Sen. Joe Lieberman is reportedly President Donald Trump's front-runner to become the next director of the FBI, a surprising choice but one that could make sense for the embattled president.

Politico reported Thursday that Lieberman was inching closer toward the job, after White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters traveling with Trump to Connecticut a day earlier that Lieberman, along with acting director Andrew McCabe, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating and former longtime FBI official Richard McFeely, would sit down with the president as he sought to pick a replacement for now-fired Director James Comey.

Lieberman, the vice presidential nominee running alongside then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000, told CNN that being considered for the FBI post "was not sought after or expected," and the pick would be an unconventional one. The former senator from Connecticut spent most of his political career as a Democrat – he became an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic Senate primary running for what would be his fourth and final term. He voted for Hillary Clinton for president last year, but he largely avoided criticizing Trump – even flirting briefly with voting for the GOP candidate – and since the election has embraced some of Trump's positions.

An observant Orthodox Jew, Lieberman defended Trump, then the president-elect in opposing the nuclear deal with Iran and supported Trump's controversial selection for ambassador to Israel.

"Like President-elect Donald Trump, we vigorously opposed the Iran nuclear agreement, so we sympathize with his promise to 'dismantle' it," Lieberman, who is the chairman of the nonpartisan anti-nuclear nonprofit, United Against Nuclear Iran, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in December.

"But we hope that he and his administration will first try to aggressively enforce and then renegotiate the deal beyond the confines of the nuclear issue to make it better for us and the world," he wrote with UANI's chief executive Mark Wallace. "If Iran does not change course, the president-elect should make clear he is prepared to impose a new round of comprehensive secondary sanctions against Iran – and then to walk away, with cause, from the JCPOA. Then it will be time, as the president-elect has said, to tear up this agreement."

Lieberman also came to the defense of David Friedman, who was confirmed as the ambassador to Israel in March, after it was revealed that Friedman had compared progressive Jewish group J-Street to the "kapos" who worked with Nazis in concentration camps.

"I think you're going to find in the weeks ahead in the confirmation process on David Friedman that it's going to be very clear that he wants – he and President Trump want to be a part of achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians – and that some of the things he said don't really reflect what he believes," Lieberman said in a CNN interview in December. "I think you'll find along the way that he will express some regrets."

He introduced Friedman at his Senate confirmation hearing, saying it would be "a shame" if Democrats voted against him.

And in January, days after Trump signed his first executive order prohibiting travel from certain Muslim-majority nations, Lieberman described the controversial order as "keeping his promise."

"I think, to me, the whole aim here ought to be to create from these countries a higher threshold before you can get in," Lieberman said of the order, which was rescinded after being blocked in federal court and replaced by a reworked executive order, which has also been held up by federal judges. "But you know there may be some people who have a very good reason for coming in and don't want to do us damage."

Lieberman, who generally supports more stringent immigration restrictions, said he was pleased that Trump had softened his rhetoric around immigration.

"I appreciate that President Trump has gone from what during the campaign sounded like a possible ban on Muslims coming into America, which would have been unacceptable, I think unconstitutional, to making a judgment that there are certain countries from which people are more likely to be coming in here to do us damage, and therefore we ought to keep them out," Lieberman said.

He was supportive of Trump's nomination of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general – a selection that was vehemently protested by Democrats for Sessions' past record on race, calling him in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee "an honorable and trustworthy person, a smart and good lawyer, and a thoughtful and open minded listener."

And he introduced Betsy DeVos, Trump's nominee to be secretary of education, at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee in January. A board member of the American Federation for Children, an organization DeVos founded, Lieberman spoke glowingly about the anti-establishment credentials of the Michigan billionaire who would go on to be the first Cabinet appointee approved only with the help of the vice president's tie-breaking vote.

Lieberman is now a senior counsel at Kosowitz Benson Torres & Friedman LLP, the law firm where Trump has taken his legal business since 1996 and which has "represented Trump in all manner of matters since at least 2001," according to the law blog Above the Law.