Grifters Gonna Grift

Boris Epshteyn is taking money to promote job candidates

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

There is much breathless speculation about what the new Trump administration will be like. My opinion is that we are already seeing in the transition the outlines of what we can expect after Trump is inaugurated and he and his henchmen defile the White House once more.

I’ve already written about this once. You can read it here. Since I scribbled that, it has come to light that Boris Epshteyn, long-time Trump advisor and supporter of Trump’s delusion that the 2020 election was stolen, appears to have been demanding bribes from would-be candidates for positions in the Trump 2.0 administration.

Why are we not surprised? What makes it especially egregious is that these were not one-time payments. No, he wanted monthly retainers in the tens of thousands of dollars.

He wanted $30,000 — $40,000 a month to “promote” Scott Bessent who was interested in the position of Treasury Secretary. Bessent declined. And got the position anyways. $100,000 a month from a defense contractor who also declined.

And then there was the sad case of Carl Paladino who was running for Congress in New York in 2022. He paid Epshteyn $20,000 a month and didn’t even get an endorsement from Trump. He lost his primary race and was left wondering…