The state department said on Saturday Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, Heather Nauert, has withdrawn.
The department released a statement saying Nauert had withdrawn and another nominee would be announced “soon”.
Nauert said she was grateful to Trump and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for “the trust they have placed in me for considering me for the position of US ambassador”.
“However, the past two months have been gruelling for my family and therefore it is in the best interest of my family that I withdraw my name from consideration.”
A congressional aide who spoke to the Associated Press said one potential issue with Nauert’s candidacy for the job involved the employment of a nanny who was legally in the US but did not have legal status to work, according to the aide. The issue was first reported by Bloomberg.
Trump named Nauert for the role in December. She had been working as a spokeswoman in the state department and is a former Fox News anchor.
Trump called her “very talented, very smart, very quick” and said he thought she would be “respected by all”. In the wake of November elections that strengthened Republican control of the Senate, her confirmation appeared likely, if not easy. But the president never officially put Nauert’s name forward and no confirmation hearing was scheduled.
With no policymaking or negotiating experience, and after 20 months as a spokeswoman, Nauert would have taken a seat on the UN security council alongside counterparts with decades of experience.
During Nauert’s time at the state department, press briefings went from being daily events to being held once or twice weekly. Nauert was mostly a polished and unflappable defender of administration policy, smoothing over frequent rifts between Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and the White House.
But her inexperience sometimes shone through: in June she cited the D-day landings as evidence of the longstanding relationship between Washington and Berlin.
The most recent permanent US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor, resigned at the end of 2018. She also had little experience in world affairs before taking the ambassador position.
Jonathan Cohen, deputy permanent representative for the US at the UN since June 2018, has been the acting US ambassador since Haley’s resignation came into effect on 1 January. He is a career diplomat.
Of Nauert’s decision to not take up the UN role, Pompeo said: “Her personal decision today to withdraw her name from consideration to be the nominee for the United States ambassador to the United Nations is a decision for which I have great respect.”