Trump aide Boris Epshteyn arrives at Trump Tower on Nov. 11 in New York. | AP Photo White House aide Epshteyn wrote controversial Holocaust memorial statement

The White House’s controversial statement marking Holocaust Remembrance Day—which excluded any mention of Jews—was written by Trump aide Boris Epshteyn, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

The White House has been defending the statement amid a storm of criticism from Republicans like Sen. Susan Collins and conservative Jewish groups like the Zionist Organization of America, which is generally supportive of Trump but released a statement expressing “our chagrin and deep pain” that the White House message omitted “any mention of anti-Semitism and the six million Jews who were targeted and murdered by the German Nazi regime and others.”


On Monday, press secretary Sean Spicer defended the statement again during the daily press briefing, noting that it was written by a senior member of the team who was Jewish. But he did not reveal who wrote the statement. “The statement was written with the help of an individual who is both Jewish and the descendent of Holocaust survivors,” Spicer said at the press briefing on Monday.

Epshteyn, a veteran of the Trump campaign who joined the Trump administration as a special assistant, did not immediately respond to calls and emails. The White House press office did not respond to emails. Epshteyn is a Russian-Jewish immigrant and the descendent of Holocaust survivors.

President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner is the grandson of Holocaust survivors and a practicing Orthodox Jew, who observes the Sabbath. His wife, Ivanka Trump, converted to Judaism ahead of their 2009 wedding.

During the briefing, Spicer angrily accused the press of “nitpicking a statement that sought to remember this tragic event that occurred, and the people who died.”

On Monday, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement about why it matters to mention Jews, specifically, as the victims of the genocide: “The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.”

Spicer said that the Trump administration is a better friend to Israel than the Obama administration was. But his defense did little to quell the controversy over the statement. “The Administration's omission of the Jewish people in a Holocaust remembrance statement is an historical mistake,” Collins tweeted Monday after the briefing.

