Trump allies concerned he’s taking advice from lawyer they joke got his license from 7-11

Boris Epshteyn has become an influential legal adviser to Donald Trump, even though he's embroiled in some of the investigations plaguing the former president.

The longtime Trump ally has frustrated Florida attorney Chris Kise by pushing for a more aggressive posture against federal prosecutors in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, but sources close to Trump's legal team told Politico he's being ill-served by Epshteyn's pugilistic approach.

“Folks in the president’s old legal team were able to prevail on some legal strategies that he didn’t agree with but that doesn’t mean he’s out or sidelined," said one source. "Boris is one of the people Chris has to deal with. I don’t know where [Ephsteyn] filed his law license. They must be selling them at 7-11. I don’t think it serves the president well to be taking legal advice from Boris and hopefully he will see that sometime soon.”

Epshteyn graduated from Georgetown, where he became friends with Eric Trump, and later graduated from its law school, and he joined Trump's first presidential campaign in 2016, where he earned Melania Trump's admiration as a vociferous defender in TV appearances, and he briefly joined the White House communications office before taking a job with the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group.

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“He always sought to be close to Trump,” said a former Trump campaign official. “He tells the president what he always wants to hear.”

His standing with Trump rose after the 2020 election, when he traveled the country challenging the former president's loss, and his name has turned up in emails related to the fake electors scheme, and he's been called to testify before the Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Trump's attempt to overturn his loss in Georgia and his phone was seized as part of the federal investigation of those efforts.

“After the 2020 election, when essentially everyone dropped off the face of the earth after Election Day, he was still there,” said another former Trump campaign official. “He was still there, he was still working, he was still trying to do what Trump wanted in spite of everyone leaving.”