Hedge fund billionaire Scott Bessent is poised to break through as America’s first openly gay Treasury secretary after Donald Trump picked him for the role on Friday.
If confirmed by the Senate, the 62-year-old founder of global macro investment firm Key Square Group would shape U.S. economic policy for the next four years.
The hedge fund heavyweight is known for running in the same social circles as King Charles, being one of Trump’s closest advisers, and living in an iconic pink mansion with his husband and two children.
So what do we know about Bessent’s life outside the financial world with his husband of 13 years, ex-lawyer John Freeman?
Freeman is a former prosecutor, reportedly in New York City, but he has lived with Bessent for eight years in their southern mansion known as the Pink Palace.
They married in 2011, before purchasing the eight-bedroom, 10-bathroom home in Bessent’s native South Carolina for $6.5 million in 2016.
Their three-story stucco house in Charleston’s historic Battery neighborhood gained its reputation as the Pink Palace as a bed and breakfast before Bessent’s move turned it into a residence.
The couple only moved in with their two school-age children in 2019, after a colossal three-year renovation.
Bessent, 62, lives primarily in Charleston, South Carolina with his husband, John Freeman, and two children. (Photo: Bessent (left) with Freeman in New York, 2014)
Bessent is known for running in the same social circles as King Charles, being one of Trump’s closest advisors and living in a pink mansion with his husband and two children (pictured)
Scott Bessent is pictured next to his husband John Freeman and one of their children – Cole Bessent Freeman – in 2012
Bessent’s family is set to move soon – after he put the property up for sale on October 28 for $22.25 million.
Trump’s transition team said Bessent was moving elsewhere in the same city, adding that the listing, just before Election Day, was due to their children fleeing the nest.
‘Sir. Bessent is under contract to purchase another home in Charleston,” spokesman Raj Shah told the newspaper Daily beast.
‘Now that the children are no longer at home, he and his wife are downsizing.’
Their teenage son Cole and youngest daughter Caroline took the last name Bessent-Freeman and, according to the Daily Beast, they are studying abroad.
Pro-tariff Bessent and Freeman are likely to move to Washington for the second Trump administration, during the inauguration on January 20.
The hedge fund heavyweight appears to have said little specifically publicly about his relationship with Freeman, but he reflected on how far gay rights in America have come since he graduated from Yale University in 1984 with a degree in political science.
Bessent’s three-story stucco mansion in Charleston’s historic Battery neighborhood gained its reputation as the Pink Palace as a bed and breakfast until he purchased the property in 2016.
Newly elected US President Donald Trump has chosen Scott Bessent as his Treasury Secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, he will shape U.S. economic policy for the next four years
“In a certain geographic region and at a certain economic level, homosexuality is not a problem,” he told the newspaper Yale alumni magazine in 2015.
“What’s great is that people in the rest of America, whether they’re blue-collar or white-collar, have access to everything.
“If you had told me in 1984, when we were graduating and people were dying of AIDS, that thirty years later I would be legally married and we would have two children through surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you.”