Norman Eisen
The Former Ethics Czar Fighting White House Corruption
In the past year, Norman Eisen, 56, has quickly become Washington, D.C.’s ethics watchdog — vigilantly watching every move in the White House, ensuring that no wrongdoing goes uncovered.
Born into a Jewish family in Los Angeles, Eisen, who keeps kosher, investigated anti-Semitism and civil rights violations for the Anti-Defamation League before enrolling at Harvard Law School — where he met a fellow student named Barack Obama.
During the first few years of the Obama presidency, Eisen served as the White House’s chief ethics lawyer, earning a reputation as “Mr. No” for his rigid approach to ethics. He then became ambassador to the Czech Republic, where his mother, a Holocaust survivor, had been born.
Now, as the board chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog organization that he founded, Eisen is ensuring that the country follows the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
Since November 2016, when the president-elect refused to untangle himself from his properties, hotels and golf courses, Eisen has become the go-to expert on all matters of government corruption and impropriety, such as the pardoning of Joseph Arpaio.
He has become a regular news and television commentator and has been cited thousands of times whenever the Trump administration crosses the lines between personal business and politics. He is also the lead attorney on two major corruption cases against the president. Every seemingly small indiscretion, he argues, represents “a critical systems failure in the Trump presidency — one that strikes at the heart of our democracy.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
