Boris Epshteyn

Boris Epshteyn (born August 14, 1982) is an American Republican political strategist, attorney, and investment banker.

Epshteyn was born in 1982 in Moscow, Soviet Union, the son of Anna Shulkina and Aleksandr Epshteyn.

His family are Russian Jews.

In 1993, he immigrated as a refugee with his family to the US, and settled in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey, under the Lautenberg amendment of 1990.

He graduated from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School in 2000.

In 2000, he matriculated at Swarthmore College, which he attended for one year before transferring to Georgetown University.

Epshteyn graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (BSFS, 2004).

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

He graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center with a Juris Doctor in 2007.

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

He worked on securities transactions, private placements, and bank finance.

In 2008, Epshteyn was a communications aide with the McCain-Palin campaign.

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

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.

He was managing director of business and legal affairs for investment banking firm TGP Securities from 2013 to 2017.

In October 2013, Epshteyn moderated a panel at the investment conference "Invest in Moscow!".

The panel was composed mainly of Moscow city government officials, including Sergey Cheremin, a city minister who heads Moscow's foreign economic and international relations department.

He was a senior advisor to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for President of the United States, and previously worked on the John McCain 2008 presidential campaign.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Epshteyn acted as a senior advisor to the Donald Trump campaign, making frequent television appearances as a Trump media surrogate on Trump's behalf.

In September 2016, Epshteyn responded to a question from MSNBC's Hallie Jackson by offering a new explanation for why a portrait of Trump – paid for by the Donald J. Trump Foundation – wound up on display at Trump National Doral Miami, a Trump-owned for-profit golf resort in Florida.

Epshteyn said, "There are IRS rules which specifically state that when a foundation has an item, an individual can store those items – on behalf of the foundation – in order to help it with storage costs... And that's absolutely proper."

Epshteyn's explanation was, in effect, that Trump hadn't used his foundation to buy some art for his resort, which would be self-dealing.

Instead, Trump's resort was helping the foundation – which has no employees or office space of its own – to store one of its possessions.

Epshteyn's explanation failed to account for why the storage services required that portrait be displayed in public, as opposed to being maintained in a storage space.

Similarly, Epshteyn failed to explain why the Trump National Doral Miami provided such storage services only for the Trump Foundation and only for a portrait of Trump.

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.'"

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."

Joy Reid, an MSNBC show host, said "Boris is abrasive. That is who he is both on the air and off."

Epshteyn co-hosted the Trump Campaign Facebook Live coverage before and after the final presidential debate.

He also anchored Trump Tower Live, the Trump Campaign Facebook live nightly program.

Following Trump's election, he was named director of communications for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and then assistant communications director for surrogate operations in the White House Office, until he resigned in March 2017.

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

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."

At the end of March 2017, Epshteyn resigned.

He was the chief political commentator at Sinclair Broadcast Group until December 2019.

He was a strategic advisor on the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign and has remained a close advisor to Trump in his post-presidency.

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

During the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, Epshteyn acted as a senior advisor to the Trump campaign.

On November 25, 2020, it was reported that he had tested positive for coronavirus.

Epshteyn became a special assistant in the Trump administration as it took office.