Did Boris Epshteyn Run Afoul of Donald Trump’s Ethics?

It’s an achievement of sorts to be banished from Donald Trump’s court due to a lack of ethics, but Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn may yet pull that off. A report that Trump requested from several of his other attorneys has documented that Epshteyn attempted to shake down various aspirants for high-level Trump appointments, offering to talk them up with the president-elect if they saw their way clear to paying him “consulting fees” to do just that.

According to the report, Epshteyn told hedge fund manager Scott Bessent that he’d recommend him to Trump for the post of Treasury secretary if only Bessent could pay him a monthly retainer of $30,000, or, that failing, invest a cool $10 million in a three-on-three basketball league in which Epshteyn had an interest. When Bessent turned down these enticements, Epshteyn made clear just who, exactly, Bessent was spurning. “I’m Boris Fucking Epshteyn!” he declared, and followed up with what sundry Mar-a-Lagoans have reported as an intimidating exchange with Bessent in front of various Trump courtiers.

The report goes on to say that Epshteyn sought a $100,000 monthly fee from a defense contractor, adding that the offer amounted to a “do or die” proposition for the contractor’s hopes of landing either a gig or a much-desired contract.

Epshteyn has been omnipresent at Mar-a-Lago since Trump’s election, and Trump has repeatedly sought his counsel on appointments. One of Epshteyn’s strong recommendations, The New York Times has reported, was Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Even if Epshteyn didn’t solicit Gaetz for a monthly retainer, there can be no doubt that had Gaetz actually been confirmed for the post, Epshteyn would have come out ahead, assured that the Gaetz Justice Department would never look into Epshteyn-related shakedowns.

Epshteyn’s yearslong presence in Donald Trump’s court is not without precedent; in many particulars, it follows the pattern laid down by Rasputin in the court of Nicholas II. As was the case with Rasputin, most members of Trump’s court apparently considered Epshteyn unbearable, a source of generally rotten advice to his sovereign and belligerent about it to boot. According to the Times, Epshteyn’s influence and access to Trump “jarred a number of people in the incoming president’s orbit,” including Elon Musk, who “expressed surprise that Mr. Epshteyn had been granted so much authority.” (Some feel that about Musk, too, but we’ll let that pass for now.)

But like Rasputin, Epshteyn was highly valued by his sovereign, carrying out all manner of highly questionable activities. Indeed, he’s currently under indictment in Arizona for his role in setting up the slate of fake pro-Trump electors as part of Trump’s design to overturn the 2020 election.

Like Tsar Nicholas, Trump, so far, has not responded to the reports of his counselor’s misdeeds by banishing him. It required independent action by members of the Tsar’s court to dispose of Rasputin, which entailed plying him with cyanide-laced pastries, shooting him, and throwing him through a hole in the ice in the Little Nevka river. At this writing, there are likely some members of Trump’s court who wish Epshteyn would be similarly dispatched.

Questioned by a right-wing website yesterday on the affair, Trump trod the line between censorious and noncommittal. “I suppose every president has people around them who try to make money off them on the outside,” Trump said. “It’s a shame, but it happens. But no one working for me in any capacity should be looking to make money.”

Now he tells us. Jared Kushner, the Trump son-in-law who was Trump’s primary Mideast counselor during his first term, has made many millions in deals with the Arab petro-states to which he was Trump’s de facto emissary. Making money through connections with Trump is actually common practice in Trumpworld.

Indeed, as Epshteyn faces the prospect of being bounced from Mar-a-Lago’s hallowed halls, he could say in his defense that he was only doing what Trump himself has long been doing. He might cite Trump’s meeting last May with Big Oil executives, in which he asked them for a nice $1 billion campaign contribution in return for which he’d let them drill on every square inch of American soil. It was this kind of transactionalism, Epshteyn might argue, that he was just seeking to emulate.

Maybe his mistake was not cutting Trump in on the deal.