Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts has withdrawn his name Wednesday from consideration as a nominee for deputy secretary of the US Department of Commerce, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Ricketts could knot sufficiently unknot his financial holdings to a government ethics office's standard, the paper reports.
His withdrawal was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.
"The issues the Commerce Department faces are so broad it was impossible to disentangle Todd and his family's interests from all that", Bob Rizzi, Ricketts' lawyer, told CBS News.
When the Trump administration announced Ricketts' nomination a year ago, it praised him as an "immensely successful businessman with unparalleled knowledge of the finance industry".
Todd and his brother Pete Ricketts are part of the billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs. "I am very proud to have him on our team".
The Ricketts family have had a colorful relationship with Trump while he made his run for the presidency.
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OPEC producers took another 153,000 barrels a day off the market in March as part of its bid to drain the world's oil glut. Brent for June settlement slipped 37 cents, or 0.7%, to $55.86 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.
The Ricketts family spent at least $1 million backing Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Since he was tapped by Trump on November 30, Ricketts has been working out what parts of his vast personal portfolio he was willing to divest in order to be given the OK by the Office of Government Ethics so he could be considered for the role in the Commerce Department, the report stated.
In 2013, Ricketts took the baton from his father, billionaire Joe Ricketts, and became CEO of organizations the senior Ricketts founded to advocate for conservative fiscal policies and reducing the size of government: Ending Spending's SuperPAC and its nonprofit advocacy arm.
Ricketts was not named in a The New York Times report from Saturday about possible conflicts and lack of transparency in the administration. A president has roughly 4,000 vacancies to fill upon entering the White House.
Todd Ricketts is the son of Joe Ricketts, owner of DNAinfo, which in March acquired Gothamist and its satellite outlets, including Chicagoist.
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