President Trump will nominate his Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan for the full job, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Thursday.
Shanahan has served in an acting capacity since the beginning of the year, after former Defense Secretary James Mattis left the role. Before that, he was the department's deputy secretary, and has a long career working for Boeing.
Given his career background, Shanahan recused himself from any decisions having to doing with Boeing — which is a few billion dollars' worth of things. The defense department's inspector general did recently clear Shanahan of ethics concerns regarding his alleged promotion of Boeing within the department, CNN notes. The end of that investigation paved the way for Shanahan's nomination.
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Shanahan's appointment comes nearly six months after Mattis issued a stunning yet subtle takedown of Trump in his resignation letter. Shanahan was among the nearly half of Trump's Cabinet that was acting at the beginning of the year, but it has since been slowly filling up with permanent members.
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