President Donald Trump has had difficulty articulating a second-term agenda. But there is one thing he’s itching to do if he wins another four years in the White House: ditch his FBI director Christopher Wray, whom he privately trashes as a tool of a supposed “deep state.”

Over the past three months before testing positive for COVID-19, the president had indicated to several senior officials and close associates that he intends to replace Wray near the start of a second term in office, routinely expressing dissatisfaction with the director’s performance and apparent unwillingness to swiftly root out Trump’s perceived enemies in the bureau, two people familiar with the president’s private remarks said. One of these sources said that when the issue of Wray’s alleged subversion came up last month, Trump said that the matter would be resolved “next year,” which this source took to mean after the 2020 election, assuming Trump emerges victorious.

Trump’s desire to dump Wray is pronounced enough that, this summer, he solicited recommendations from close advisers on who they think he should choose as a replacement, the knowledgeable sources said. One of them said they provided Trump with “a couple suggestions” but declined to name names. Neither of these people who’d spoken to the president recently about Wray recalled him mentioning anything about axing the FBI director before the November election.