Trump assembles an administration of uber-wealthy Cabinet members and advisers, sparking ethics questions

Wealthy hedge fund executive Scott Bessent – whose confirmation hearing for treasury secretary is slated for Thursday – has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and owns property from North Dakota to the Bahamas.

Wealthy hedge fund executive Scott Bessent – whose confirmation hearing for treasury secretary is slated for Thursday – has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and owns property from North Dakota to the Bahamas. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon, billionaire Steve Feinberg, is co-founder of a private equity firm that has owned companies with federal defense contracts. His pick for energy secretary, meanwhile, oversees a fracking-services company. Trump is returning to the White House after making appeals to working-class voters in last year’s election, but he has assembled one of the wealthiest administrations in history – turning to nearly a dozen people worth at least $1 billion on their own or combined with their spouses’ assets – to oversee the nation’s policies and represent the US overseas as ambassadors. This class of uber-rich officials has begun the process of detailing their vast wealth for public disclosure and developing plans with government ethics officers to unwind holdings that could pose conflicts of interest. In some cases, federal agencies have strained to complete the necessary paperwork ahead of confirmation hearings – with vetting slowed, for instance, by the incoming administration waiting a month after the election to sign an agreement paving the way for FBI background checks. Some Senate confirmation hearings originally scheduled for earlier this week have been delayed because of the paperwork holdups, including one for former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to run the Interior Department, whose wealth is traced to a software company he founded and sold to Microsoft more than two decades ago. His hearing is scheduled for Thursday. This week, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, said late-arriving paperwork had left lawmakers on the panel with less than 24 hours to review the financial disclosures of another Trump pick, Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, tapped to head the Department of Energy.