Boris’ Shakedown
By all accounts, CNN was the first to report that lawyers for Trump conducted a review of Boris Epshteyn’s “consulting” for access to Trump. Not long after, John Solomon wrote a more thorough version of the story, including the detail that an announcement for Boris’ appointment as an Assistant to Trump in the White House has been held up as the review concluded.
A week ago, a draft of a press release was handed to transition aides announcing Epshteyn as an assistant to the president, but it was never released, several senior aides confirmed to Just the News. He has told some friends in recent days that he might prefer to stay on the outside rather than go into the administration.
Before I get into what those reports say, consider Hugo Lowell’s take, which focuses not so much on the allegations, but on an assertion that the report itself arises from in-fighting among Trump’s team.
Epshteyn remained part of Trump’s inner circle as of Monday evening, with Trump riding high on the news that special counsel prosecutors had moved to dismiss the two federal criminal cases against him – a victory he credited to Ephsteyn.
The first person that Trump called when prosecutors withdrew the cases against him was Epshteyn, according to two people with Trump at the time, which occurred just as CNN first reported the existence of the review into Epshteyn’s consultancy scheme.
For the remainder of the day, Epshteyn was on the offensive as his allies dismissed the review as an attempt by Warrington to decapitate Epshteyn after he successfully pushed for Bill McGinley to be the White House counsel, rather than Warrington, who had also been in contention for the role.
Epshteyn’s allies later portrayed the review as a political hit job capitalizing on Epshteyn’s role in pushing for the former congressman Matt Gaetz to get the nomination for attorney general before it sank under the weight of sexual misconduct allegations.
It’s unclear the event that predicated the investigation (note that Steven Cheung told multiple outlets that the review focused on others in addition to Boris). But incoming Treasury nominee Scott Bessent’s discomfort with Boris’ entreaties, going back to February and including a pitch for a basketball related business with some ties to Steve Bannon, seem to have played a key role.
Which is one question I have about this process. The various stories quote disgruntled targets, including a defense contractor whose access Boris promised to throttle going forward. CBS includes comment from Don Bolduc, who found the entire process of getting Trump’s neutrality in a New Hampshire Senate primary so distasteful, he left politics thereafter (though a Bolduc staffer was more positive about the experience).
“There’s nothing honorable about politics,” said Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general. After his failed Senate race, Bolduc enrolled in a police academy and became a rookie small-town cop at age 60.
But it doesn’t say whether Matt Gaetz paid Boris for his support for a reckless bid to be Attorney General just as the ethics report into him was completed.
Boris’ “consulting” has been public for years, in campaign finance disclosures. What seems to have happened here is that someone who, after some brawling, came out of ahead on a contentious cabinet spot, Treasury, complained about the manner in which Boris monetizes his access to Trump.
But the timing of the effort matters: given the dismissal of the federal cases against Trump, he’s unlikely to prioritize the views of those who didn’t help him beat the rap, at least for now. Heck, that may explain the conflicting stories about whether the inquiry is done or not: maybe Trump ended it once the dismissals came out.
And so six people who would like to see him gone have made sure this gets publicized.
It’s sort of cute: People like Solomon claim that Trump’s promise to Drain the Swamp was anything but projection. So whatever else this incident does (Eric Trump has suggested it could lead to Boris’ ouster, but perhaps that’s just from the White House itself), it may disabuse Trumpsters of their fantasy that they’re not part of a very corrupt system.
One more point: I assume there will be a Jack Smith report. And I assume it’ll include Boris’ actions in there, actions that (like this shakedown) seem to tie to Steve Bannon. If people are interested enough in ousting Boris that may provide an interesting dynamic.
Small typo: “ties” instead of “time”? But incoming Treasury nominee Scott Bessent’s discomfort with Boris’ entreaties, going back to February and including a pitch for a basketball related business with some time to Steve Bannon, seem to have played a key role.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the same username AND EMAIL ADDRESS each time you comment so that community members get to know you. A change in email address triggered auto-moderation; please advise by reply to this comment if this change is permanent. /~Rayne]
The bit about Eric Greitens in Solomon’s piece is more than a little self-serving. Yes, Solomon identifies him as “former Missouri Gov.” but somehow fails to note that the “former” part of that was more than a little unwilling. Greitens was governor for less than a year, during which he managed to alienate the GOP legislative leaders with his arrogance and high-handedness toward them. It quickly emerged that Grietens acted that way in his private personal life, with stories of non-consentual extramarital sex with his hair stylist emerging with apparently photographic evidence — he denied the non-consentual part, and the photos were never found (thus the criminal case was dismissed) — and also allegations of campaign finance problems. (Given how lax Missouri’s campaign finance laws are, you gotta be really over the top to violate them.) The legislature initiated steps to begin a special session, solely to consider impeachment charges, and Greitens resigned rather than face what looked increasingly like he would be removed from office.
So all that is background. In Solomon’s piece, he writes this:
Somehow, this does not match the vibe I’ve had of dealing with Greitens in Missouri. “This created a sense of unease and pressure on my part” — passive voice, from a guy who touts his Navy SEAL background every chance he gets, and never ever portrays himself as passive and at the whims of anyone else? Not the guy I watched in Jefferson City. Greitens delighted in making folks uncomfortable (as the legislative Republican leaders could attest to), and never allowed even the perception that someone else might make him uncomfortable see the light of day.
But maybe Greiten’s legal travails in Missouri taught him to go to the lawyers sooner, rather than later, and to say what the lawyers tell you to say.
Curious to know if Greitens is still being represented by Michael Adams, currently Kentucky’s Secretary of State?
This is a reply to you Rayne, not a public comment, thank you!
My email is
[ address removed for privacy and security ]
I believe that is the same email address I used twice previously–in any case that is the correct address.
[Moderator’s note: you’ve previously used 2X an email address beginning with the letter v. /~Rayne]
Ok, my mistake, sorry, I’ll stick with this address from now on.
The Greed and Grift Group.
“No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns.”
— Jacque Fresco
Very possibly. Another possibility is that Trump has moved on to the “what have you done for me lately?” stage of his relationship with Boris.
Or, if not that, “what are you likely to do for me in the future?”
My take on Trump is that he’s more like Stalin than Hitler. If so, it’s worth noting that both of Stalin’s first two NKVD heads reached the point of not being able to offer anything else to Stalin, and were replaced before being liquidated.
Being ghosted by Trump is like a summer breeze, in comparison.
TY for comment on the situation. After reading an AP headline I thought EW might have info, so I checked. The links you give are more detailed than the AP story, while overlapping. The impression is Trump remains a pirate operationally, but wants his people to not be their own privateers. He misses not having Roy Cohn as his sounding board, and Boris seemed to fit best as a surrogate. Something like that. Susie Wiles will distance Boris and Trump will accept. IMO. Whatever else, Trump does not need this going into a second term. But it might wake him up. Is there any real evidence Gaetz somehow prompted Boris to push him for AG, or was that just independent mischief? If you don’t know or have a guess, we can wait and it will come out.
Great piece!
Of all the attorneys who Trump has surrounded himself with since 2016, Boris Epshteyn appears to be the only one born in the Soviet Union and who, along with his parents, came to the US in 1993 under the November 1989 Lautenberg Act, an Act that allowed immigrants from the former Soviet Union to settle into the US without having to show proof to US authorities they were political prisoners, threatened, harassed, tortured, or physically or mentally mistreated by the former Soviet Union or, even by Russia between 1989 and 1993.
It’s long past time for a detailed investigation into who Boris Epshteyn’s really is and his contacts and connections to Russia’s intelligence services, including but not limited to, Putin, Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska.
One of Putin’s well known methods of operations in the US is for his oligarchs to hire attorneys so that their activities (Putin and his oligarchs) can use attorney/client privilege to thwart and stymie investigations into their respective activities.
In 1993 Boris Epshteyn was 12 years old. And Vladimir Putin worked for the Mayor of St. Petersburg.
So what! His parents weren’t twelve years old!
His parents need to be investigated for their connections to Putin, Semion Mogilevich and Roman Abramovich once they landed in New Jersey in 1993 and for the next thirty years thereafter.
Mogilevich and Abramovich were actively doing business with the New York and New Jersey US Mafia families in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Uh you do know that Jewish people were not particularly treated well by the Soviet Union? And that’s why a record number of Jews left the USSR when Gorbachev relaxed rules on Jewish emigration?
To say nothing about the fact that — even with Putin being former KGB — it is ridiculously reductionist to believe that the Soviet Union of the early 90s and the current Russian Federation have both similar foreign policy and intelligence goals, to the point where a freakin’ 12 year old in 1993 would be an agent in 2024. Come on.
I don’t know what radicalized Epshteyn into the American right wing but it’s absurd to say that oh yeah he must’ve been some sleeper agent before he was even a teenager. That’s just silly and ahistorical. And borderline xenophobic/antisemitic, even if Epshteyn is a huge turd.
“Just Some Guy
November 26, 2024 at 7:39 pm
Uh you do know that Jewish people were not particularly treated well by the Soviet Union? And that’s why a record number of Jews left the USSR when Gorbachev relaxed rules on Jewish emigration?
To say nothing about the fact that — even with Putin being former KGB — it is ridiculously reductionist to believe that the Soviet Union of the early 90s and the current Russian Federation have both similar foreign policy and intelligence goals, to the point where a freakin’ 12 year old in 1993 would be an agent in 2024. Come on.”
I don’t know what radicalized Epshteyn into the American right wing but it’s absurd to say that oh yeah he must’ve been some sleeper agent before he was even a teenager. That’s just silly and ahistorical. And borderline xenophobic/antisemitic, even if Epshteyn is a huge turd.”
Conduct research on Putin’s oligarch, Semion Mogilevich.
He’s been the head of Ukraine’s (and Russia, too) most ruthless organized crime syndicates for decades.
One of his first business scams during the Soviet Union’s existence was stealing money and art from the Jews in Ukraine and in Russia who were fleeing to Israel. Mogilevich is Jewish.
In the 1990s he was on the FBI’s ten most wanted list and his attorney of record was the late FBI director, William Sessions, whose son, Pete Sessions, is a noteworthy Republican Congressman.
Read Lev Parnas’ Congressional testimony about Pete Sessions.
Back in 1997, I had to conduct research for a client into the Russia/Ukraine organized crime syndicates that had established business relationships with US Mafia families in New York, New Jersey and Florida.
After Yeltsin brought Putin into his administration, Putin made a decision to use his KGB experience, including surveillance of Mogilevich’s organized crime syndicate, to strike a deal with Mogilevich to share the rare mineral natural resource wealth found in the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.
That’s why Putin is fighting to forever control the Donbas. It’s all about Putin, Mogilevich and Abramovich controlling Ukraine’s rare mineral natural resources.
Reply to Sussex Trafalgar
November 27, 2024 at 2:58 pm
Thanks for admitting that your Epshteyn screed is nothing but useless insinuations. When right wingers do the same regarding George Soros, don’t let it strike you as anything important. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
Reply to Just Some Guy and Sussex Trafalgar
November 27, 2024 at 6:54 pm
This internecine rock throwing ends here. We’re all going to agree that Boris Epshteyn is problematic no matter if he was raised into this anti-democratic bent or radicalized to it later.
We should not forget he was with the first Trump administration for a whopping eight weeks before he left, hired for his own TV show for broadcast three weeks later which was aired on a mandatory basis across all Sinclair-owned stations for two years. This is not something the average right-wing operative can pull off, thereby manipulating public perceptions in way which increases sympathy for his anti-democratic bullshit. Epshteyn was an investment banker like Steve Bannon, one who promoted investment in Russia but with access to broadcast airwaves Bannon could only dream of.
Now focus on the problem of a far-right operative who not only managed to saturate broadcast TV with his crap but used his acquired TV persona and brief tenure with Trump’s previous administration to create clout for a shakedown operation.
Per Rayne: Citizens United as oligarch driven, and US nationals essentially colluding with non-US oligarchs. Yup.
Agree with every point (although I’m still keeping on myopic, blurry eye on metals).
Thanks for taking the time. Appreciate it.
One ought to wonder why the Donbas, and Ukraine, seem to be a theme. Resources, particularly minerals, are always a factor in this region, and seem to be driving conflict.
In addition to Abramovich and Mogilivich and their resource grabs, the oligarch Deripaska has been particularly associated with aluminum [see also: Rusal]. If Putin loses access/control to those mineral resources, things will go badly for Russia. Without access to a lot of aluminum, it’s hard to see how Russia could make planes or rockets, to say nothing of pharmaceuticals.
Rather than imply that Sussex Trafalgar is anti-Semitic, you may want to listen to — or read — Bill Browder’s “Freezing Order”, which is so outrageous that it gives a mordant gravity to: ‘truth is stranger than fiction’.
“Freezing Order” explains how the NY lawyer that Browder hired then later ended up working on behalf of Russia. While advocating for Russia, the lawyer used the privileged information that Browder had earlier provided him under attorney-client privilege **against** Browder. The cynicism and backstabbing are extraordinary.
The Russians would want you to think that this is about Anti-Semitism. Actually, it’s about brutal resource grabs and cynical legal manouvers.
I believe it’s far less about extraction inside the Donbas region than it is about transit. Like this:
Before the first Trump administration, one of the pipelines through Donbas and across Ukraine piped 80% of Europe’s natural gas, affording massive leverage to Putin as well as revenue for both Russia and Putin’s pockets.
Thanks, Rayne.
Interesting.
This post seems to be about the corruption of the Trump administration, highlighting Boris E’s involvement in ‘shaking down’ anyone seeking to work for Trump. I would argue that we need a wider scope, and IMVHO Sussex Trafalgar (like EW before him/her) is pointing to a key facet of corruption that allowed Trump to ascend to the presidency: the Russians have mastered how to use US legal procedures (and political campaign) procedures against American interests.
Perhaps stories about metals, and particularly specific metals (aluminum, lithium) and specific Russian oligarchs (Deripaska), and specific Kentucky senators (McConnell, Rand Paul), would help more Americans grasp the mess that we are in due to political corruption.
I’ve been keeping one squinted, jaundiced, myopic eye on metals, which are fundamental to tracking the potential for ‘green transition’, especially batteries. The Russians (and Chinese) have been very, very busy controlling metals — particularly those required for ‘green’ batteries and newer technologies. A lot of resource grabbing appears to be done via mercenary activities (particularly in Africa), but some resource grabs occur in US courtrooms, and via contributions to the US political system.
Like the rest of us, the Russians still need titanium and aluminum for technologies like airplanes. (I know that you are aware, but other readers maybe not so much.). Ukraine has both metals. Kentucky has an aluminum plant, but until Trump I, it was unavailable for Russian oligarch Deripaska to purchase it. He was able to purchase it while KY senator Mitch McConnell was Majority Leader of the US Senate.
While McConnell was presiding over the US senate and calculating federal judiciary appointments, Russia [Prigozin, Wagner] was competing with the Chinese in Africa to control minerals on that continent — China was so successful that they now control 80% of the ‘green manufacturing chain’. Consequently, they need metals ‘bigly’; all of which highlights the growing stakes for controlling lithium and rare earths, as well as metals manufacturing facilities. As fossil fuel use diminishes, there is more pressure on specific metals, and their manufacture.
Ukraine is reputed to have lithium, rare earths, titanium, and aluminum. (Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or resources to do a deep dive on the legitimacy of the sources easy at hand, so am only searching public sources. Rayne, you are a genius at this type of research: I do my level best at odd moments, but I defer to your superior research capabilities should you ever taken an interest.)
But to continue unraveling this thread about how to wake Trumpsters up to the levels of corruption into which we are now sinking: Russian oligarch Deripaska’s public info states that he was originally a metals trader. Someone with that background would have been ideally positioned during the past 30 years to take advantage of … ‘opportunities’ in mining and metals.
And in post-2010 Citizens United America, ‘metals traders’ began to master an understanding of the US political and legal systems. This item from Charles Pierce at Esquire (2019) remains a chilling gem of clarity: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27259438/oleg-deripaska-kentucky-aluminum-mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul/
I would point out that probably a lot of Trumpsters don’t read Charles Pierce, and don’t recall this story. (EW covered it back in the day, but probably very few Trumpsters read her, either.)
That story about Deripaska buying off McConnell/GOP on the QT to control aluminum production at a location in ‘red’ Kentucky circles back to Sussex Trafalgar’s point that Russia has mastered using the US legal system for its own purposes. Recall that it was the Trump I administration, in conjunction with McConnell and Rand Paul, that allowed Deripaska to purchase that aluminum production facility in the U.S.
When you consider Russia’s cynical use of US legal procedures, and layer on the history of Deripaska buying off Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul via political ‘contributions’ that are basically untraceable** — and in finally layer on the reality that McConnell also controlled federal judicial appointments — then Sussex Trafalgar’s comments become ‘interestinger and interestinger”.
Far be it from me to second guess telling people to knock off a food fight in an EW thread, but Sussex Trafalgar makes a significant point that US legal procedures have been manipulated by Russian interests. This should not get lost in the mix of words: corruption in the system, including court proceedings and privileged conversations with attorneys, is accelerating political, legal, and economic debasement.
Because, as EW wrote:
IMVHO, they’d be more disabused if they connected the dots between Boris’s ‘shakedowns’ and:
.Citizens United + McConnell/GOP + Russian aluminum oligarch/Rusal buying an aluminum plant in Kentucky + McConnell/GOP appointing federal judges, including SCOTUS justices to determine who gets to own aluminum plants, give campaign donations, and subvert legal proceedings.
IOW, it appears that Trumpsters have not yet connected the dots about who appoints the judges who rule that ‘money = speech’, resulting in a campaign system flooded with untraceable money. IMVHO, Trumpeters grasp that the system has degraded into a pay-to-play, transactional system. But they don’t know who made it that way, so they don’t know who to hold accountable.
One starts to wonder how much Boris E would shake down Deripaska to be Secretary of Transportation? or Energy? Or Interior?
And then there is Rand Paul’s. — another recipient of Deripaska’s generosity, surely — whinging on about Ukraine being a waste of money. Maybe someone in the media could ask how much money Rand Paul ‘shook down’ from Deripaska in order to wail on the floor of the senate about aid to Ukraine being such a waste of taxpayer dollars? The layers and levels of corruption boggle the mind.
None of this would be possible if the Russians (and Chinese) didn’t have a very good grasp of the US legal system, courts, legal procedures, and judicial nominating processes. Too bad the Trumpsters are so lacking in that same knowledge base; that ignorance leaves them defenseless.
————————-
** Untraceable money is a feature, not a bug, of 2010’s Citizens United SCOTUS decision. Thus, we circle back to John Roberts’ key role in the corruption of US governance, yet again…
I’m not seeing metals as a big deal for Ukraine’s exports: https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/ukr/all/show/2022 (I don’t want go deeper into metals but lithium in particular is not a thing in Ukraine; worry instead about Chile now and Bolivia in the longer term.)
What Ukraine has apart from being the route of transport to the EU and Eurasia is Black Sea access and a lot of productive arable land, most in grain and seed oil production. It’s far more productive than Russia and of quality surpassing other potential large producers like India.
WRT to corruption: I’ve suspected for some time that Citizens United was oligarch driven. and oligarchs don’t respect borders, only the limits of power and money. If US oligarchs like Kochs wanted dark money power, they didn’t care if Russian or Saudi oligarchs helped attain it. It’s all of a piece. The question before us: who is and has been willing to sell out the US? McConnell and Paul clearly have their prices; who else?
Which is why Epshteyn has been shaking down the aspirants to appointments. He’s looking for those who are willing to sell out.
El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago proposes to immediately issue full security clearances to his staff and political appointees. A dangerous practice that puts the nation’s security at risk, but predictable, given Trump’s frustration with how the process worked his first time round.
The Big Lie that follows is that Trump promises to conduct FBI background checks on his political appointees AFTER the Senate approves them. You wouldn’t accept that sort of promise from a used car salesman. But it’s the sort of easy lie Trump loves to sell. What it doesn’t tell us is what the Senate would base its approvals on.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/26/trump-transition-team-fbi-security-clearances-background-checks
In the immortal words of Bart the Bard “You just bought another load of crap from the world’s fattest fertilizer salesman.”
This tells us the corruption of the FBI begins on day 1.
Thank you for the post. Interesting reading.
Getting to be part of the group who runs the country must be a real opportunity for some to improve their own situation and bank account.
Given the track record of some of these players I expect there to be more posts along this line for some time. Given the number of books written about Trump and his gang after his first run as being President, expect a lot of people will be getting out their computers for volume two.
I was just about to start a book about Anne Boleyn. Not necessary if we have our own palace intrigue going on.
Trump thinks Boris saved him from SC Jack Smith? Leonard Leo might beg to differ.
Not exactly a brilliant way to start – in-fighting, leaks, side deals. However our American Caligula does like to see people fighting over him.
Trump might think that because it’s what Boris is constantly telling him.
Per Tom Petty:
OT: X is objecting to the sale of Infowars
https://www.404media.co/xs-objection-to-the-onion-buying-infowars-is-a-reminder-you-do-not-own-your-social-media-accounts/
X’s legal filing in the InfoWars bankruptcy case is both batshit crazy and also what you’d expect. It asserts that X owns every account, can do whatever it wants with them, and can inject itself into legal proceedings that have nothing to do with it.
They haven’t thought it through: if they own every account, then they’re responsible for what those accounts contain.
Elmo thinks being a customer or vendor of Alex Jones’s defunct InfoWars gives it authority to control the bankrupt debtor and control over how it distributes assets to a creditor with a higher priority? LOL. Even if Xitter is deemed to be the owner of InfoWars various Xitter accounts, it does not mean it can control the bankrupt debtor or his estate.
Elmo’s position is basically, “Because I said so!” What a putz.
More specifically, Elmo argues that Xitter owns the accounts of all its users, they only have a “license” to use them.
Even if true, it appears that “InfoWars” is the licensee, not Alex Jones. Unless Xitter has a “change of control” provision in its “license,” improbable, it is legally irrelevant whether InfoWars is owned by Jones or the Onion, because the licensee remains the same: InfoWars.
Elmo is trying to save Alex Jones’s ass without spending a dime, and trying to prevent a political adversary from becoming the owner of Jones’s former medium. More fool Elmo.
Musk, in doing that, also boosted the Xitter exodus by creating a powerful new rationale: “Elon says he owns you!”
Dang. The graf after the link was supposed to be a block-quote.
I thought I got it in, but I must have done something wrong.
I’ve always thought Trump considered any grifting off his name was solely for him, but this might suggest he’s allowing a certain amount by Boris.
That was then, this is now.
First thoughts are usually the most accurate.
If Boris is getting $30,000 a month, what’s Donnie’s cut – $15,000?
Timothy Snyder’s post “The Strongman Fantasy” serves as a reminder that most Americans are a tad unfamiliar with corruption – it’s so seldom encountered in the wild that folks fail to recognize it. That will likely change.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-strongman-fantasy-updated-1124
I think corruption is encountered in every big city. It isn’t rare in the US – it’s just considered to be local news.