Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan withdrew Tuesday from consideration to be confirmed as Pentagon chief, President Donald Trump said, leaving the Pentagon in transition at a time of escalating tensions with Iran and questions about the role of the military at the border with Mexico.
In a message on Twitter, Trump said that Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who has led the Pentagon on an acting basis since early this year, had "decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family."
Trump said Army Secretary Mark Esper would be the new acting Pentagon chief.
"I believe my continuing in the confirmation process would force my three children to relive a traumatic chapter in our family's life and reopen wounds we have worked years to heal," Shanahan said in a statement. "Ultimately, their safety and well-being is my highest priority."
The acting defense secretary did not provide specifics, but court records show a volatile family history around the time of his 2011 divorce. Shanahan and his ex-wife had been married since 1986.
His ex-wife, Kimberley, was arrested several times on charges that included burglary, property damage and assault. The assault charge was a misdemeanor for domestic violence in August 2010 when, according to police records, she hit Shanahan a number of times, giving him a bloody nose and black eye. She had accused him of punching her in the stomach, which Shanahan has denied. The police report said she was not injured, and he was not charged. Her assault charge was eventually dropped.
There also was a November 2011 incident in which the couple's son, who was 17 at the time, struck his mother with a baseball bat in the home where he lived with her in Sarasota, Fla., according to court records. The next day, Shanahan flew from Seattle to Florida and stayed with his son in a hotel room for several days before his son surrendered to authorities. The teen pleaded guilty to battery and was sentenced to four years of probation.
"I would welcome the opportunity to be secretary of defense, but not at the expense of being a good father," Shanahan said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
In an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Shanahan said that "bad things can happen to good families." He called the episode "a tragedy" and said that dredging it up publicly "will ruin my son's life."
The Pentagon, in a statement, said Esper will take over the job at midnight Sunday. Esper and Shanahan met at length Tuesday to begin transition planning.
One official familiar with Shanahan's confirmation discussions said Tuesday afternoon after Trump's tweets that he does not think Shanahan withdrew from consideration under pressure from the White House.
"I'm pretty sure he made his own decision," the official said. "They were struggling with this here recently."
The official said that Shanahan repeatedly expressed "overwhelming concern for the members of his family" as it became evident that sensitive details about them could become public.
Later Tuesday, Trump told reporters at the White House that he heard about the problems for the first time Monday.
"I didn't ask him to withdraw, but he walked in this morning," said Trump. "He said it's going to be a rough time for him because of obviously what happened."
Trump also said it's "most likely" he will nominate Esper for the permanent job "pretty soon."
The post atop the Pentagon has not been filled permanently since retired Gen. James Mattis abruptly stepped down in December after delivering a letter to Trump outlining a list of foreign-policy differences and a warning that the administration should not allow relations with allies to fray.
'FIASCO,' SCHUMER SAYS
On Capitol Hill, the Shanahan news was met with mixed reactions.
Top Democrats said his sudden withdrawal underscores the shortcomings of White House vetting for key Trump administration jobs.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Tuesday that "this Shanahan fiasco" shows that the administration's national security policy is "a shambles."
Senators said they were largely unaware of allegations involving Shanahan's family situation when he was confirmed as deputy defense secretary in 2017.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal raised the possibility that Shanahan deliberately concealed the domestic problems. "I think there ought to be an investigation by the [inspector general] in the Department of Defense," he said.
Shanahan, he said, "had an obligation to reveal it himself. This is potentially a violation of law."
Some Republicans were ready to simply move on.
"We need to do a better job. If they had the information they should share it," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close ally of the president's, said of the allegations surrounding Shanahan.
Graham quickly added: "That's over. I appreciate his service, but it's now time to find somebody else."
Trump defended the vetting process, calling it "great," and said the Shanahan issues were "very unfortunate," and they "came up a little bit over the last short period of time."
Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also defended the process, dismissing concerns about the omissions on Shanahan's record.
"There's so much you can do in a vetting process, and I think, as a general rule, on anything except the No. 1 position, they only go back historically 10 years," he said. "So I think the vetting process, the process is probably all right."
Inhofe said Trump called him Tuesday about Shanahan. The president didn't offer any specifics, Inhofe said, but mentioned "allegations that would be very uncomfortable and really not worth making sacrifices for."
During his tenure, Shanahan was criticized for slighting Lockheed Martin, Boeing's chief competitor, for its mismanagement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, an aircraft that is years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget.
He was widely viewed as acquiescing to the White House and other government officials, including John Bolton, the national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state. As he defended the president's proposal to create a Space Force in the military, Shanahan said that the Pentagon would not be viewed as the "Department of No."
Before Trump plucked him to be the acting secretary, Shanahan was a deputy secretary of defense, brought on to make the bureaucracy operate more like a business. His reputation at Boeing was as someone who could meld technical details with a broad vision. At the Pentagon, he was known for digging into the details. He held five-hour meetings about F-35 fighter jets on some Saturdays.
Earlier this year, the Defense Department's inspector general conducted an ethics investigation into whether Shanahan "repeatedly dumped" on Boeing's competitors and ultimately cleared him of the allegations. Once that hurdle was removed, Trump nominated him to be the next secretary.
Esper, a top lobbyist for Raytheon and an executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has a long history of ties to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, where he worked as an adviser to Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader, and various committees with jurisdiction over foreign policy and national security.
Besides Esper, who was confirmed as secretary of the Army in November 2017, officials said that Pompeo and Richard Spencer, secretary of the Navy, are on the short list for defense secretary.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear and Helene Cooper of The New York Times; by Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe, Paul Sonne, Joshua Dawsey, Robert Costa, Lisa Rein, Karoun Demirjian and Erica Werner of The Washington Post; and by Lolita C. Baldor, Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Daly, Gene Johnson and Curt Anderson of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/19/2019