Bessent Vows to Finish Selling Assets Per Ethics Agreement by End of Year

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday he was working to divest illiquid personal assets including farmland by year-end after the Office of Government Ethics said he had not met deadlines in the ethics agreement he signed in January.

In a letter sent Monday to Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, OGE Deputy Compliance Director Dale Christopher wrote that Bessent "has failed to timely comply with certain terms of the ethics agreement he signed" before taking office in late January.

The ethics office said it told Treasury ethics officials to remind Bessent "that it is his personal responsibility to avoid taking any action that could create a real or apparent conflict of interest with regard to his holdings," the letter said.

Bessent, a key figure driving President Donald Trump's economic agenda including tariffs, tax cuts and deregulation, signed an ethics agreement in January that pledged he would divest his Key Square Group hedge fund and other assets to avoid conflicts of interest. Many of the divestitures were to be completed by April 28.

In a statement issued by the Treasury Department, Bessent said he had completed all but 4% of the asset divestitures required by his ethics agreement.

"Much of (that) is farmland, an inherently highly illiquid asset," Bessent said.

"As agreed upon with OGE, I am working towards selling the rest of my required divestitures before the end of this year."

A U.S. Treasury spokesperson said most of the required divestitures, valued at about $1 billion, were completed before Trump's second-term inauguration on Jan. 20. Bessent took office about a week later.

OGE's Christopher on Wednesday said in a subsequent letter to Crapo that Treasury ethics officials told OGE that Bessent was committed to completing the remaining asset divestitures by Dec. 15, including farmland in North Dakota.

Christopher said the Treasury officials had explained that the illiquid assets were not readily marketable. Some assets also have restrictions on who can acquire them.

Bessent will continue to recuse himself from certain matters affecting the remaining assets, and Treasury's ethics office has set up screening procedures to identify "potentially conflicting matters that would be seen by the Secretary," the letter said.