Boris Epshteyn Is A Lawyer. And He Does Work For Trump. But Does That Make Him Trump’s Lawyer?

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(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Every Trumpland lawyer is weird and terrible in their own unique and special way. And while no one will ever rival America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani for sheer breadth of chaos in his wake, Trump consigliere Boris Epshteyn gives Rudy a run for the Four Seasons Total Landscaping money.

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Epshteyn is the subject of a piece in yesterday’s New York Times by Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer, and Jesse McKinley, who describe an impressive effort by the lawyer to monetize his proximity to the former president. Epshteyn has been paid directly by Trump’s campaign and his PAC, but he also has a lucrative sideline advising candidates who either seek Trump’s endorsement, or hope to at least avoid getting crosswise with the de facto head of the Republican Party.

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It’s not clear whether Epshteyn (GULC ’07) functions as a lawyer or an all-purpose conduit to Trump. He’s described as managing Trump’s legal team, including Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, the lawyers who steered him on a collision course with the National Archives and the DOJ by refusing to hand over presidential records. Epshteyn also talked the president into some of his more ridiculous litigation, including the federal suit against Bob Woodward and the claims against the Pulitzer Prize Board and New York AG Letitia James filed in Florida state court. And he infamously had his phone seized by the FBI after his role in the fake electors scheme was revealed — although whether those two things are connected is anyone’s guess. (Well, not the DOJ — presumably they know for sure.)

People in Trumpland seem unconcerned with the ambiguity of his role.

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“Boris has access to information and a network that is useful to us,” said Trump lawyer Timothy Parlatore, who was also brought into the fold by Epshteyn. “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.”

Parlatore was also blissfully unbothered by the possibility that Epshteyn might himself face criminal charges, yawning to the Times that “Absent any solid indication that Boris is a target here, I don’t think it affects us.”

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But the problems inherent in that ambiguity, wherein Epshteyn purports to be a lawyer trading on access to his client in his political activities, appear to have recently dawned on the man himself. The Times reports that, after the FBI executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Epshteyn got Trump’s PAC to retroactively change his role from communications consultant to include legal services, and then doubled his fee.

Moreover, Epshteyn tried and failed to get Trump to sign a letter retroactively designating him as his personal lawyer. This jibes with reporting that the feds are looking at whether Epshteyn tried to improperly construct a joint defense agreement (which the Times refers to as a common-interest agreement), allowing the parties to share information about their interactions with the DOJ and the grand jury without abrogating privilege.

In the meantime, ABC has a deep dive into Epshteyn’s involvement along with Steve Bannon in a cryptocurrency scheme aimed at monetizing the MAGA faithful’s hatred of President Biden. The coins were called $FJB, which stands for “Fuck Joe Biden,” or “Freedom, Jobs and Business” if you’re in mixed company.

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“It shows your total and complete independence,” Bannon said in 2021 after he and Epshteyn announced their “strategic partnership” with $FJB. “You’re going to very quickly have non-reliance on their financial system.”

Since then, the coin has lost 95 percent of its value, and it’s unclear whether the managers have made promised charitable contributions out of the 8 percent transaction fee. ABC reports that the cryptocurrency is under federal investigation by prosecutors in New York — the same office which has charged Bannon with fraud in connection with the border wall scheme for which he was federally pardoned by Trump on the way out of office.

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And yet, as independent journalist Marcie Wheeler notes, Bannon himself was widely quoted in the Times piece praising Epshteyn’s powerful defense of Trump.

“Boris is a pair of heavy hands — he’s not Louis Brandeis,” the podcaster blustered, adding that Trump “doesn’t need Louis Brandeis.”

“You need to be a killer, and he’s a killer,” he went on.

But with prosecutors seeking to pierce attorney client privilege, the issue may not be whether Epshteyn is a “killer,” but whether he is a “lawyer” for the former president. And the grand jury’s still out on that one.

He Helps Trump Navigate Legal Peril While Under Scrutiny Himself [NYT]
Federal prosecutors looking into Bannon-backed cryptocurrency $FJB, say sources [ABC]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

Topics

Boris Epshteyn, Donald Trump, Government, Legal Ethics