Boris Epshteyn

Boris Epshteyn (/ˈɛpstaɪn/ EP-styne;[1] born August 14, 1981) is an American Republican political strategist, attorney, and investment banker.

He was a member of a team of Trump lawyers[5][6] who sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election.

During his time as an undergraduate at Georgetown, Epshteyn joined the Eta Sigma chapter of the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity.

[16] Following his graduation from law school, Epshteyn was part of the finance practice of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy.

While at the campaign, he was part of a rapid response task force that concentrated on issues related to vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

[18] Epshteyn was managing director of business and legal affairs at the boutique investment bank West America Securities Corporation until the firm was expelled by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in 2013.

In September 2016, the media watchdog organization Media Matters for America criticized CNN, Fox News, and PBS for failing to disclose Epshteyn's "financial ties to the former Soviet Union, which include consulting through Strategy International LLC for 'entities doing business in Eastern Europe' and moderating a Russian-sponsored conference on 'investment opportunities in Moscow'".

[22] In an October 2016 article in The New York Times, three political commentators said in separate interviews that Epshteyn "often acted in a rude, condescending manner toward show staffers, makeup artists and others".

He wrote Trump's controversial statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2017, which omitted any mention of the Jewish people.

[25] Following criticism of the omission, press secretary Sean Spicer defended the statement as written by "an individual who is both Jewish and the descendent of Holocaust survivors.

[29] He led the campaign's Jewish outreach, appearing in media interviews across national outlets and participating in large-scale events across the country, including in Florida, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Trump's 2020 results with Jewish voters were higher than his 2016 totals, when he received 24%[33] of the Jewish vote nationally and 30% in Florida.After Trump lost the election, Epshteyn was a member of a team that gathered at a "command center" in the Willard Hotel one block from the White House days before Joe Biden's victory was to be certified by Vice President Mike Pence in the Senate chamber on January 6.

On January 2, Trump and two of his attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, held a conference call with some 300 Republican state legislators in battleground states Biden won to provide them with false allegations of widespread voting fraud they might use to convene special sessions of their legislatures to rescind Biden's winning slates of electors and replace them with slates of Trump electors for Pence to certify.

Epshteyn and others asserted this was a contingency similar to the 1960 presidential election, in which two slates of electors were prepared pending results of a late recount of ballots in Hawaii.

[8] In November 2024, it was reported after an internal investigation that Trump's top lawyer, David Warrington,[42] had alleged that Epshteyn had asked for monetary payments from at least two people seeking White House jobs.

One of those two people was billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, who said he refused Epshteyn's requests for money.

[7][50] Epshteyn is accused of assisting Rudy Giuliani in carrying out the scheme to submit fake electors for Trump in Arizona.