Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent failed to disclose at least $100,000 of his husband’s JP Morgan stock last year, triggering a review of his family’s finances by the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General, according to a filing with the Office of Government Ethics.
Instead of reporting the money as stock, the initial financial disclosure form that Mr. Bessent filed last year ahead of his confirmation indicated that the funds were cash in an undisclosed bank account. The funds were divested last July after the error was caught and Mr. Bessent paid a $200 late fee because the mistake was not reported in a timely matter, according to a note on the filing written by Mark Vetter, an ethics official in the Treasury Department.
A former hedge fund manager, Mr. Bessent last year reported having assets worth more than $700 million after being tapped to be President Trump’s Treasury secretary. His husband, John Freeman, is a former assistant district attorney in New York who later became general counsel of Bessent Capital, one of Mr. Bessent’s former funds. Mr. Freeman was appointed last July to serve on the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Mr. Bessent’s mishandling of his family’s financial divestment obligations were reported earlier by Politico.
It is the second time that the Treasury secretary failed to comply with the divestment requirements that cabinet officials face when assuming top government roles.
Last August, the ethics office alerted the Senate that Mr. Bessent was delinquent in selling his holdings of thousands of acres of North Dakota soybean farmland. The holdings represented a potential conflict of interest because Mr. Bessent was leading trade talks with China that involved negotiations over its purchases of American soybeans. Mr. Bessent divested the farmland holdings last December after requesting an extension.
Mr. Freeman’s JP Morgan stock would not necessarily pose a conflict of interest for Mr. Bessent, however the Treasury secretary does wield significant influence over the financial sector. This week, he held meetings with Chinese officials at the New York headquarters of JP Morgan Chase.
The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.
In the filing, Mr. Vetter wrote that the Office of the Inspector General reviewed the situation and determined that there had been no “knowing violation” of the Ethics in Government Act. Mr. Vetter said that he agreed with that finding.
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