02/27/2025 at 09:30AM
Full committee hearing.
Nominee:
- John C. Phelan, to be Secretary of the Navy
Phelan heads the Palm Beach-based private investment firm Rugger Management. Previously he was Managing Partner and Co-Founder of MSD Capital, LP, the private investment firm for Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. Prior to forming MSD, Phelan was a principal for seven years at ESL Partners, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based investment firm. At ESL, Phelan was responsible for ESL’s Special Situation and Distressed Investments and helped grow the firm from $50 million to over $2 billion in assets under management. Prior to ESL, Phelan was a vice president at the Equity Group and was in charge of acquisitions (Western region) for the Zell-Merrill Lynch Real Estate Opportunity Funds. Phelan began his career at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he worked as a financial analyst in the Investment Banking Division. He has not served in the Navy or any other branch of the military.
He does, however, have an extensive art collection. Phelan and his wife Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, started collecting art more than two decades ago and they were included on a list of the world’s top 200 art collectors published by Artnews earlier this year. Phelan raised $12 million for Trump’s campaign when he hosted a dinner at his $38 million Aspen home in August. The Phelans are on the North American acquisitions council of the Tate museums and the contemporary art council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. John also serves on the board of the Aspen Art Museum, where admission has been free for visitors since 2009 thanks to an endowment from him and his wife. From 2006 to 2019, the Phelans also hosted an annual wine tasting event called WineCrush to raise funds for the institution as part of its summer ArtCrush gala.