Internal rivalries spilled into public view on Monday as Boris Epshteyn, a top adviser to Donald Trump, found himself at the center of an ouster effort over accusations he asked potential administration nominees to pay monthly consulting fees in exchange for lobbying for them to the president-elect.

The maelstrom engulfing Epshteyn suggested that barely 20 days since Trump won the election, the knife-fight culture of the first Trump presidency, where bitter aides took any opportunity to remove rivals, had returned.

Over the weekend, David Warrington, the Trump 2024 campaign’s general counsel, finalized the main conclusions of a review into Epshteyn that found he had unsuccessfully solicited tens of thousands of dollars from potential nominees including Scott Bessent, who has been tapped to be Treasury secretary.

According to the review, one day after Trump met with Bessent for the first time in February, Epshteyn invited him to lunch at a hotel in Palm Beach, where he asked for a monthly retainer of at least $30,000 to promote his name at Mar-a-Lago in case Trump won the election.

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Bessent declined and complained to an aide that Epshteyn tried to shake him down. Later, when Epshteyn asked Bessent to invest $10m in a three-by-three basketball league, he declined but told associates Epshteyn would probably give him better access if he had taken up the offer.

The review into Epshteyn, a longtime Trump adviser who has wielded outsized influence with Trump over cabinet picks and positions in key departments, also concluded Epshteyn’s employment and access to Trump should be terminated, according to two people briefed on the findings.

But 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.

Epshteyn denied the allegations. “I am honored to work for President Trump and with his team,” he said in a statement. “These fake claims are false and defamatory and will not distract us from making America great again.”

If the failure of the Gaetz nomination was seen as an opportunity to oust Epshteyn, even in part, it may have been a miscalculation since the original idea to have Gaetz lead the justice department came from Trump himself, according to a person with direct knowledge of that conversation.

One Trump adviser who does not care for Epshteyn speculated on Monday night that his influence was weakened by the allegations. But another Trump adviser suggested Epshteyn may have emerged stronger. “Trump isn’t impressed by a pile-on because that’s what all those prosecutors did to him,” the adviser said.

Epshteyn’s staying power with Trump has remained constant over the years and surprised newcomers to Trump’s orbit. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have both remarked to associates that they did not understand why Trump placed so much trust in Epshteyn.

The principal reason for that trust in the last two years, according to multiple aides and associates, has been because Trump has regarded him as a major reason for how he sidestepped legal peril during the 2024 campaign.

Epshteyn assembled and oversaw the Trump legal team during the criminal investigations and in the multiple criminal cases, including when Trump found it nearly impossible to find capable lawyers to represent him. “Boris was always right,” Trump is said to have remarked about Epshteyn’s legal strategy.

That endeared him to Trump, who has taken Epshteyn seriously on policy and personnel suggestions, even if they were derided by others on the Trump team. When Trump named his top picks for the leadership of the justice department, they were Trump’s personal lawyers who had all been recruited by Epshteyn.