Bessent Has Yet to Fully Divest Assets, Raising Concern at Ethics Agency [View all]

Source: New York Times

Aug. 13, 2025 Updated 5:36 p.m. ET


The U.S. government’s ethics watchdog agency said this week that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has failed to fully comply with an agreement that required him to divest his financial assets, posing potential conflicts of interest as he leads the Trump administration’s economic policy agenda.

The United States Office of Government Ethics sent a letter dated Aug. 11 to Senator Michael D. Crapo, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, alerting him to Mr. Bessent’s delinquency in fulfilling or amending the agreement. The questions about conflicts of interest come as Mr. Bessent is steering President Trump’s agendas on taxes, trade and financial deregulation.

A millionaire former hedge fund manager, Mr. Bessent pledged before his confirmation hearing in January to divest from dozens of funds, trusts and farmland investments. In a letter to the Treasury’s ethics office at the time, Mr. Bessent, who was formerly the top investor for the liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros, said that he would do so to “avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest.”

The Treasury secretary maintains that he has divested 96 percent of the assets that he is required to shed and that he will be in full compliance by Dec. 15.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/us/politics/scott-bessent-conflicts-of-interest.html