Patrick Shanahan’s expected promotion to permanently head the Defense Department has stalled amid an ethics investigation and a series of unimpressive public performances, according to four people with knowledge of internal White House discussions.

Shanahan, who has served as the Pentagon’s acting chief since Jim Mattis resigned in December, has also been hampered by the deadly crashes of two airliners manufactured by his former employer, Boeing — the company that’s also at the heart of his ethics problems.

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The sources aware of the White House discussions believe Shanahan is still in the mix for the job, but they say recent events and his own missteps haven’t done him any favors with President Donald Trump. And some said his fate will remain uncertain until the Defense Department’s inspector general finishes a probe into allegations that Shanahan has privately boosted Boeing during meetings at the Pentagon.

With so much scrutiny on the crashes that killed a total of 346 people, it’s enough to have “the Boeing stench on you” to hurt chances for a nomination right now, a former Defense Department official told POLITICO.

“The IG investigation has slowed the process down and there are quite a few of us who want to see the report before moving forward, including President Trump,” a senior White House official said. “He’s paying close attention, as he has always done with those he’s considering for top positions.”

The White House had no immediate comment Friday, and the Pentagon said Shanahan’s only priority is doing the job Trump appointed him to.

“Acting Secretary Shanahan will continue to serve at the discretion of President Trump,” Shanahan spokesperson Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino said. “He remains solely focused on leading the Department’s operations, improving the lethality of our Nation’s military, and ensuring the highest-quality care for our servicemembers and their Families.”

In addition to his Boeing ties, Shanahan’s prospects suffered because of his rocky performances at last month’s Munich Security Conference and at a Senate hearing last week, sources familiar with the deliberations said.

Two other sources, both senior Republican Capitol Hill aides, confirmed that Shanahan’s expected nomination has been delayed but said they did not know why.

Trump had been poised to nominate Shanahan after the Munich conference, according to the former Defense Department official and two Republican aides. And he was prepared to do it again after Shanahan’s appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the two GOP aides said.

But Trump “cooled” on Shanahan after The Washington Post reported after the conference that the acting secretary had clashed with lawmakers over the president’s decision to pull all U.S. troops from Syria, the ex-Defense Department official said.

“There have been rumors of potential nominations every couple of days in the last eight weeks,” said a person close to Shanahan. “I personally have never seen any specific plan or intent from the White House that they were ready to go and pull the trigger. So far as I can tell it’s sort of a self-licking rumor ice cream cone.”

Shanahan’s Senate appearance last week was considered a second public audition, but he failed to forcefully push back against Democrats’ attacks on Trump’s plan to raid anti-drug-trafficking and military construction money to pay for a southern border wall. Instead, Shanahan repeatedly deferred to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford and Pentagon comptroller David Norquist.

“The hearing plus the Boeing thing is why you’re hearing it’s on ice and that’s my understanding, too,” a former U.S. official said.

The person close to Shanahan acknowledged that his performance was lackluster.

“That was his second hearing that he’s ever done so the goal going into it was just to get on base, not hit a home run,” the person said. “He got on base, no major fumbles.” He added that there are “clearly opportunities to continue to improve in the future.”

Then on Wednesday, the Defense Department’s inspector general’s office announced it was investigating Shanahan’s alleged private comments championing Boeing. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint last week with the IG, relying heavily on a January report by POLITICO in which current and former officials said Shanahan had disparaged rival contractor Lockheed Martin in private meetings and held up Boeing as a shining example.

Shanahan, who worked at Boeing for 31 years, signed an ethics agreement when he came to the Pentagon in 2017 and pledged to recuse himself from decisions involving the company. But his ties to the company are well-known — once, when Trump couldn’t remember Shanahan’s name, the president referred to him as “the Boeing guy,” a former White House official told POLITICO in January.

Shanahan had been senior vice president of Boeing’s commercial airplane programs, where he managed profit and loss for all 700-series aircraft — including the 737 MAX 8, the model that crashed in both recent air disasters in Indonesia and Ethiopia. But it’s believed his involvement with the MAX 8 program was tangential at best from his level.

One of the people said a third chance for Shanahan to get the job arrived March 15, when Trump was expected to announce the nomination during a visit to the Pentagon. But a 737 MAX flown by Ethiopian Airlines crashed on March 10, calling new attention to a Boeing software change that aviation experts say could send a plane into a fatal dive.

The president’s Pentagon visit “was in the aftermath of the hearing and then the Boeing stuff and now the 737 news and all that jazz,” the former official said. “All of that came together to say, yeah, we’re going to put this on ice and it may be not possible at all.”

A Senate Republican source familiar with the matter agreed that Shanahan is on hold for a “host of reasons,” including the “Boeing investigations, ongoing concerns about Boeing favoritism and preferences at the department, speaking ill of Lockheed.”

None of the current and former officials said Shanahan is out of the running. Instead they expect Shanahan to be a placeholder while the IG’s investigation plays out. The former U.S. official said Shanahan’s standing had improved before the Senate hearing, and that skeptical senators were starting to come around after the Munich debacle.

If Shanahan doesn’t get the job, Army Secretary Mark Esper and Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie would likely return as possible contenders. Yet two sources said the White House is hesitant to move Wilkie because he has proven effective at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Another challenge for Shanahan comes Tuesday, when he appears before the House Armed Services Committee, whose chairman, Washington state Democrat Adam Smith, is a critic of Trump’s policies. Shanahan will almost certainly face harsher questioning than he did before the Senate, especially since the Pentagon released its list of construction projects that could be deferred to pay for the wall.

“Next week is going to go way worse,” said the Senate Republican source. “If Shanahan didn’t do well in a Republican hearing, he’s definitely not going to do well in a Democratic-dominated Adam Smith hearing.”

Wesley Morgan and Eliana Johnson contributed to this report.

Well of course, didn’t need the Party spying on everything she was doing

— Robert Petersen (@Sonikku_a2) March 22, 2019

Because security is important when you have secrets.

— 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕧𝕖 𝔽𝕖𝕚𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕚𝕟 (@saf) March 22, 2019

New Jersey’s path to marijuana legalization once looked easy.

Phil Murphy, the state’s unabashedly liberal governor, has made legalization one of his top legislative priorities since his election in late 2017. But on Monday, when the state Senate and General Assembly are scheduled to vote on a bill to legalize recreational cannabis for adult use and introduce sweeping reforms to wipe clean the records of current and past marijuana offenders, its fate is far from certain.

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While the Democratic Party’s leadership is with Murphy, support among the rank and file in New Jersey’s deeply blue Legislature is flagging. Murphy’s dreams of a massive homegrown marijuana industry are at risk.

“I don’t know that we’re there yet,” Murphy told POLITICO in an interview Friday, referring to whether there is enough support in the Legislature to pass the bill. “I don’t know that we’ll be there on Monday.”

The size and complexity of New Jersey’s legal cannabis bill, coupled with fierce intraparty skirmishes among the state’s top Democratic lawmakers, has bogged down the legislation’s prospects over the last week. Defeat would be a stinging rebuke to Murphy, functioning as a referendum on his ability to generate support for his priorities within the Legislature.

The delay on legalizing marijuana comes after a bruising budget fight last year between Murphy and legislative leaders that nearly led to a state government shutdown and, more recently, a difficult slog to raising the state minimum wage to $15, a change the Legislature eventually approved.

By all accounts, Murphy has been lighting up the phones, talking with lawmakers and activists throughout the state to drum up support for the legalization bill. But despite strong Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature, those efforts may not be enough.

“We have been able to change a number of minds. This can’t be just me to get this done,” Murphy said, noting that he been coordinating with Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, both fellow Democrats, to whip votes. “This is an all-in, 1,000 percent effort by the Senate president, speaker, myself. That’s the way we’ve approached it.

“It is what it is,” he said. “As we sit here on Friday morning, we’re not there yet.”

From the outside, it’s difficult to understand how Murphy could have been dealt anything less than a winning hand. His popularity remains above water, Democrats have firm control of the Legislature and an overwhelming majority of New Jerseyans support legalization. Many of the state’s most powerful lawmakers, including some of Murphy’s foes, pledged their support.

But support for the measure among lawmakers has been soft, especially in the Senate, where Murphy has struggled to maintain steady relationships with some members of his own party. Sweeney, in particular, has repeatedly clashed with the governor over his progressive agenda.

And although Sweeney is a sponsor of the legalization bill, senators within the South Jersey delegation over which he exerts major influence have yet to sign on — much to the consternation of Murphy confidants. The Senate president has also asked Murphy deliver yes votes from Democratic state senators who have openly opposed the measure for months.

“I can’t get it done without him,” Sweeney said in an interview. “From what I see, he’s trying. I’m not blaming him. I’m not casting blame at all. The speaker, myself and the governor all understood that all three of us had to do this to get it done.”

While multiple sources around both Sweeney and Murphy say the two are working together to whip support in advance of Monday’s vote, both sides have started to lay groundwork on how to best assign blame in the event the legalization bill fails on Monday.

“Nobody trusts him to deliver on his promises,” a prominent Democrat told POLITICO in a text message, referring to Murphy. “No Gov … of either party in 30 years had their commitments doubted like this guy. That’s why he can’t pass certain things.”

If they don’t have the votes — a distinct, even likely, possibility in the Senate, where 21 yes votes are needed — Sweeney has said he’ll pull the bill and put off a vote until the lame duck session at the end of the year. Murphy has had some success moving votes in the Assembly, two sources told POLITICO. Passage is widely considered a safer bet in the lower house.

Both Murphy and Sweeney were quick to point out that the only other state to advance marijuana legalization through legislation was Vermont. New Jersey’s a larger and considerably more diverse state with a complex mix of urban, suburban and rural legislative districts. And although it’s thoroughly Democratic, its Legislature has traditionally been slow to adopt progressive social policies.

“They’re older,” one senior legislative aide said, ticking off the names of four Democratic senators who are expected to vote against legalization. “If you had a younger Legislature, I think this would be easier.”

That’s created an uphill battle for Murphy — already fighting the perception that he has little sway with lawmakers — to bring the bill over the finish line.

“He’s trying to build a house with no foundation,” according to one source close to the whip process. “If this moves, it’s because Coughlin and Sweeney get it done. And it’ll take [them] less work.”

Further complicating matters is the bill itself, which has ballooned from 68 pages at its introduction to 176 pages in its most current form. Lawmakers will have had just one week to review it before it goes up for a vote.

The central components of the bill allow individuals to keep up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use. It would also create a powerful new regulatory body, which would be tasked with taxing and regulating the industry, as well as issuing permits for new cultivators, processors, wholesalers and dispensaries.

The bill goes well beyond laying out a framework for the industry, however. Many of the latest provisions, which both Sweeney and Murphy endorsed, expand the scope of the state’s processes for expunging old criminal records. Past and former offenders who have been convicted of charges as severe as a third-degree felony — distribution of one ounce to five pounds of cannabis — would be able to clear their records.

Another section, colloquially referred to as “virtual” expungement, bars employers, housing authorities, licensing boards and other institutions from considering marijuana convictions in assessing applicants. There are also carve-outs to ensure the Cannabis Regulatory Commission grants at least 15 percent of the licenses for new dispensaries to women and minority-owned businesses.

These provisions was viewed as instrumental in assuring the support of minority Democrats, such as Assembly members Jamel Holley and Annette Quijano — both of whom signed on as sponsors. A late addition, agreed to last weekend, which allows those currently incarcerated, on parole or facing fines for marijuana offenses to petition to vacate their convictions, was instrumental in securing the endorsement of the state’s ACLU.

It’s not clear if that will be enough. As of Friday, the legalization bill is still five or six lawmakers short of obtaining the 21-vote majority needed in the Senate.

“This is standing up an entire industry from scratch. It’s undoing social justices and redoing criminal justice reform,” Murphy said. “I’m not discouraged at all by the complexity or the time that it’s taken. I know some people are saying, ‘Hey gosh, why can’t you just wave a magic wand?’”

There is still a chance Murphy and Sweeney will emerge from Monday’s vote with a victory.

On Thursday, Murphy organized a news conference in which roughly a dozen advocates and faith leaders from North and Central Jersey pressed lawmakers to support the legalization bill on the merits of its criminal justice reform elements.

A day later, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Stephen Fulop gave their endorsement to the measure. Those endorsements could be meaningful for lawmakers in northern New Jersey, where Murphy has more clout, but where some lawmakers have been reluctant to support recreational cannabis.

“We’re counting on the governor,” said Democratic state Sen. Nicholas Scutari, the legalization bill’s primary sponsor. “It’s a big promise for him, it’s a big issue for me.”