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Feinberg in Talks for Spy Role Joins Trump on Carrier

Feinberg, in Talks for Spy Role, Joined Trump in Military Visit

(Bloomberg) -- Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire Wall Street investor who has held talks to take a national-security role in President Trump’s administration, joined the president in a visit to an aircraft carrier on Thursday.

Photos and video of the event show Feinberg accompanying Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis on their way to the USS Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Virginia. Feinberg, the founder of the $30 billion Cerberus Capital Management LP, has held discussions about jobs including one overseeing a review of the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Feinberg in Talks for Spy Role Joins Trump on Carrier

Trump, from left, Feinberg, and Mattis on March 2.

Source: Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System

The potential appointment has spurred controversy, partly because Feinberg hasn’t worked in government or national security since serving in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in college. Another concern is that any review might overlap with the duties of the director of national intelligence.

At a hearing in Washington on Tuesday, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine expressed concern that “an individual who runs a private equity firm,” and doesn’t have experience in the relevant areas, was being considered to lead such a review.

Dan Coats, who has been nominated for the director’s post, said at the hearing that Feinberg is talented and "a patriot." But he said any such review would have to be undertaken by his office, not the White House.

"I’ve made that clear to the president and his advisers that that is where I stand," Coats said.

A spokeswoman for Feinberg had no comment on his appearance on the aircraft carrier.

Feinberg, 56, has been studying how he might distance himself from Cerberus to mitigate the conflicts of interest that a government post would bring. With companies that train special forces and service warplanes, Cerberus was the 32nd-largest federal contractor in 2015, according to the Federal Procurement Data System.

Chief among these Cerberus properties is DynCorp International Inc., which gets most of its revenue from the Defense and State Departments, and which has struggled with plummeting sales since 2012. Feinberg also owns a stake in gunmaker Remington Outdoor Co., which relied on law enforcement and government customers for 16 percent of sales as of 2015.

Feinberg has discussed several roles with White House officials, including posts at the departments of homeland security and defense, people with knowledge of the talks said last month. Among Trump’s earliest supporters on Wall Street, Feinberg and his wife spent more than $2 million to assist his presidential run.

Asked about Feinberg at a press conference last month, Trump praised the investor’s skills but said it wasn’t clear whether his services would be needed for an intelligence review.

To contact the reporters on this story: Shannon Pettypiece in Washington at spettypiece@bloomberg.net, Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net, Zachary Mider in New York at zmider1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Eichenbaum at peichenbaum@bloomberg.net, Alan Mirabella, Dan Kraut