Nominee to be Navy secretary withdraws
Monday, February 27, 2017
(The Washington Post by Missy Ryan) – The Trump administration’s choice to become the next Navy secretary has pulled his name from consideration, the Pentagon said Sunday, the second nominee to head a military service who has bowed out in recent weeks.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced that Philip Bilden, a private equity fund manager, had withdrawn his name in a decision “driven by privacy concerns and significant challenges he faced in separating himself from his business interests.”
In his own statement made public by the Pentagon, Bilden said he concluded that he would not be able to fulfill U.S. ethics rules “without undue disruption and materially adverse divestment of my family’s private financial interests.”
Bilden, who has been a donor to Republican causes, until recently was a senior official at the equity firm HarbourVest Partners.
