He submitted his resignation letter in December.
John Feeley, the U. S. ambassador to Panama, resigned, stating he could no longer serve President Donald Trump and his administration in an apolitical fashion.
“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,” Feeley wrote in his resignation letter, according to CNN .
“My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honor bound to resign. That time has come.”
It’s unclear what about the Trump administration troubled Feeley, who submitted his resignation letter in December, according to State Department official Steven Goldstein.
“Everyone has a line that they don’t want to cross, and we respect that,” Goldstein said.
Deputy Chief of Mission Roxanne Cabral will replace Feeley after he leaves in March. Feeley, a career diplomat, said he was leaving the embassy “in good hands.”
News of Feeley’s resignation came just a day after Trump reportedly asked during a meeting about immigration reform why the United States should admit immigrants from “ s**thole countries .”
His question specifically referred to Haiti and African nations, according to the report, but lawmakers reportedly raised the prospect of restoring legal protections for immigrants from El Salvador as well.
On Friday, Trump cast doubt on the reported quotes‘ accuracy, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who attended the meeting, indicated he was lying.
“He said these hate-filled things, and he said them repeatedly,“ Durbin claimed.
With Feeley gone, Panama will join South Korea, Saudi Arabia and dozens of other nations that lack a Senate-confirmed ambassador.
This wasn’t the first time Trump received criticism from his own subordinates. After he made controversial comments about violent, racially charged protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, many members of Trump’s advisory councils quit.
And in a scathing letter, members of the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities resigned . “Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions,” the letter read.
