Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary made a bold forecast when he and his husband put their iconic pink mansion on the market eight days before the election.
Bessent, a hedge fund manager who is one of Trump’s closest economic advisers, and his husband, John Freeman, a former prosecutor, purchased the famous property in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2016 for $6.5 million.
The parents of two school-aged children, Bessent and Freeman listed the home on Oct. 28 for $22.25 million.
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Their three-story stucco mansion on the historic Battery was a bed-and-breakfast known as the Pink Palace when they bought it eight years ago.
They and their two children didn’t move into the eight-bedroom, ten-bath estate until 2019, after a massive, three-year renovation.
Trump transition team spokesman Raj Shah declined to answer questions about the timing of the listing of Bessent’s house—one week before Election Day—or the family’s plans to move to Washington.
“Mr. Bessent is under contract to purchase another home in Charleston. With children no longer at home, he and his spouse are downsizing,” Shah told the Daily Beast.
Their teenage son, Cole, and younger daughter, Caroline, study abroad. It’s unclear if they would join their parents in Washington for the second Trump administration.
Bessent, if confirmed by the Senate, will be the first ever gay secretary of the Treasury Department.
“If you had told me in 1984, when we graduated, and people were dying of AIDS, that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Bessent told his alma mater’s Yale Alumni Magazine in 2015.
The stunning residence of the perhaps soon-to-be Treasury secretary—a former Democratic donor and protégé of liberal billionaire George Soros—has tangential ties to the White House.
Constructed around 1848 for the prominent Charlestonian John Ravenel, the home—with panoramic views of the Ashley and Cooper rivers that empty into the Charleston Harbor—boasts a pool, spa and formal garden designed by Perry Guillot, who previously tended the White House Rose Garden.
If the mansion sells at or above its current price, it would take the record for the most expensive home sale in the Charleston region. The current record holder, the Vanderhorst Mansion on Kiawah Island, fetched $20.5 million in 2021.
It doesn’t appear Bessent and his husband believed Trump was a shoo-in when they put their mansion on the market.
The property’s co-listing agent, Robertson Allen, told The Post and Courier that Bessent and Freeman decided to part with their home in order to spend more time traveling while their children study abroad in Europe.
Those plans may have changed.
Trump announced Bessent as his pick on Friday, after a crowded and heated competition for the Cabinet seat that included the likes of private equity billionaire Marc Rowan, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Kevin Warsh, a member of the Federal Reserve’s seven-person Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011.
“Scott will support my Policies that will drive U.S. Competitiveness, and stop unfair Trade imbalances,” Trump wrote of his pro-tariff Treasury nominee.
A trusted advisor to Trump on economic policy, Bessent donated approximately $3 million to the president-elect and other Republican causes during the 2024 election cycle.
As he himself noted in an interview, he was among the few on Wall Street supporting Trump for president.
“I was all in for President Trump. I was one of the few Wall Street people backing him,” Bessent said in a recent interview.
