The White House says President Trump has full confidence in acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who has stepped in temporarily to replace former Director James Comey after Trump fired him on Tuesday.

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday “several individuals” are being considered in the search for a full-time director.

She added the Department of Justice is also considering whether McCabe will act as interim director for the entirety of the search to replace Comey.

But asked at a press conference if Trump has confidence in McCabe serving out his duties as acting director, Sanders responded: “Yes, he does.”

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Reporters eagerly pointed out that White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said at prior briefings that Trump had full confidence in Comey. Sanders said at Wednesday’s briefing that Trump had been considering firing Comey since his first day in office.

Trump reportedly met with McCabe in the Oval Office hours after Comey’s ouster, though the content of their discussion was not revealed.

Rumors have been flying in the hours since the White House’s move to fire Comey that someone other than McCabe might step in as acting director.

Several media outlets ran profiles of McCabe that praised him as a well-regarded bureau man. But he comes with some baggage.

A super PAC supporting McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, in a Democratic bid for Virginia state Senate took in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from allies of Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close confidant of the Clinton family.

The FBI’s inspector general is probing the matter to determine whether McCabe should have recused himself from the investigation into Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonBarr criticizes DOJ in speech declaring all agency power 'is invested in the attorney general' Virginia Democrat blasts Trump's 'appalling' remark about COVID-19 deaths in 'blue states' The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden asks if public can trust vaccine from Trump ahead of Election Day | Oklahoma health officials raised red flags before Trump rally MORE’s use of a private server as a result.

And Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley Charles (Chuck) Ernest GrassleySenate Republicans signal openness to working with Biden Senators offer disaster tax relief bill Trump spikes political football with return of Big Ten season MORE (R-Iowa) has honed in on McCabe in his search for answers about whether British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled a controversial opposition research dossier about Trump, was at one point on the FBI payroll.

“Mr. McCabe's appearance of a partisan conflict of interest relating to Clinton associates only magnifies the importance of those questions,” Grassley wrote in a March letter to Comey. “That is particularly true if Mr. McCabe was involved in approving or establishing the FBI's reported arrangement with Mr. Steele, or if Mr. McCabe vouched for or otherwise relied on the politically-funded dossier in the course of the investigation. Simply put, the American people should know if the FBI's second-in-command relied on Democrat-funded opposition research to justify an investigation of the Republican presidential campaign.”

Sanders on Wednesday said Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump's policies on refugees are as simple as ABCs Ocasio-Cortez, Velázquez call for convention to decide Puerto Rico status White House officials voted by show of hands on 2018 family separations: report MORE, who recused himself from investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election after it was revealed that he failed to disclose a meeting he had with the Russian ambassador during the campaign, would nonetheless participate in finding a replacement for Comey.

Sanders reasoned that the FBI is involved in much more than just an investigation into alleged ties between Trump campaign officials and Moscow, so Sessions’s recusal doesn’t preclude him helping with the search.

“It’s one of the smallest things on their plate, so he should absolutely have a role in determining that,” Sanders said.