John Feeley, the U.S. Ambassador to Panama, has resigned his post explaining that he no longer feels he is able to serve President Donald Trump. Feeley is a career diplomat, as well as a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot.
U.S. official said that the official resignation was communicated to State Department officials on December 27 and is not related to the “shithole countries” incident the president recently made. Feeley is one of the most respected senior officers in the department, considered to be one of the best Latin America specialists.
According to Reuters, Feeley said on Friday that “as a junior Foreign Service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the president and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree with certain policies. My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honor bound to resign. That time has come.”
The resignation was confirmed by a State Department spokeswoman, who said that Feeley “has informed the White House, the Department of State, and the Government of Panama of his decision to retire for personal reasons, as of March 9 of this year.”
Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein stated the he did not know about the ambassador’s resignation until Thursday evening, adding that the ambassador was leaving for “personal reasons.”
”Everyone has a line that they will not cross, if the ambassador feels that he can no longer serve … then he has made the right decision for himself and we respect that,” Goldstein said to the reporters at the State Department.
No official comments were given by the White House regarding the reasons for Feeley’s resignation, who throughout his career served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, as director for Central American affairs in Washington and as the No. 2 official in the State Department bureau that deals with Latin America.
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