Deputy Defense Secretary Feinberg amended his ethics agreement to keep receiving Cerberus services indefinitely

On January 6, 2026, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg signed a letter to the Department of Defense's ethics office amending his February 18, 2025 ethics agreement. The original agreement had permitted him to contract with Cerberus Capital Management (CCM) -- the private-equity firm he founded and led before his appointment -- for administrative services only through April 15, 2026, on the understanding that he would transition to an outside provider. In the amendment, Feinberg wrote that he had been unable to find another company to provide the services and would "continue to contract for these services with CCM," extending indefinitely his arrangement to receive tax compliance, accounting, and health-care benefit services from the firm he had led for more than 25 years. DOD's Alternate Designated Agency Ethics Official, Danica S. Irvine, transmitted the amendment to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics the next day, January 7, 2026, stating she continued to find Feinberg in compliance with conflict-of-interest law.

The amendment drew no public notice until ProPublica published a disclosure-records investigation on March 8, 2026, drawn from nearly 3,200 released ethics filings covering more than 1,500 Trump appointees, which surfaced it and connected it to Feinberg's oversight of the Pentagon's Golden Dome for America missile-defense program: at least four companies owned by Cerberus have been awarded contracts under the program Feinberg's own office runs. Feinberg had separately filed paperwork stating he divested from Cerberus and its related businesses, but the amended ethics agreement's carve-out for ongoing services meant the underlying financial relationship continued.

The disclosure came amid a broader rollback of executive-branch ethics enforcement: Trump rescinded the Biden-era appointee ethics pledge on his first day in office, later fired 17 inspectors general, and removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics, which has since operated without a director or chief of staff. Feinberg's Cerberus/Golden Dome relationship was the clearest single dateable conflict-of-interest instance identified in ProPublica's broader trove, which also covered Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Updates

2026-04-26 — Sen. Warren pressed Feinberg to sever Cerberus ties and recuse [5, 6]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote to Feinberg asking him to cut all ties with Cerberus and recuse himself from any Cerberus-related matters for the remainder of his tenure at DOD.

2026-07-27 — Warren renewed pressure, sought Golden Dome contracting and bidder details [7]

Warren wrote to Feinberg again, saying he had not yet made the commitments she asked of him in April or answered her questions, and additionally asked him to disclose which Cerberus-affiliated companies had bid on Golden Dome contracts, explain DOD's criteria for awarding those contracts, and explain his own role in awarding them.