The Trump administration has asked the Stephen Feinberg, the founder of a New York-based private equity firm to lead a review of the U.S. intelligence community as President Donald Trump vows to crack down on what he describes as "illegal leaks" of classified information. | Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo Trump taps billionaire financier to head intelligence board

Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire financier, will head President Donald Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the White House announced on Friday.

Feinberg is the co-founder, executive chairman and co-chief executive officer of Cerberus Capital Management, an investment firm that also owns defense contractor DynCorp International.


Shortly after taking office in 2017, the president reportedly asked Feinberg — a Trump supporter and major Republican donor — to conduct a review of U.S. intelligence agencies.

Feinberg, however, had not been cleared by the Office of Government Ethics at the time and his status was still unknown as of Friday evening. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Last year Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist at the time, was pushing Feinberg and Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater Worldwide, to the president in their bid to send a private military force to Afghanistan. Trump ended up not sending a private army and instead sent more U.S. troops to the country.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement on Friday that Feinberg “brings over 30 years of experience conducting organizational assessments, operational improvements, and complex reforms across foreign and domestic stakeholders to his position.”

