Top Trump attorney Daniel Epstein named interim dean at FIU law school
Florida International University has a new law school dean with deep ties to President Donald Trump.
Daniel Epstein, who served as counsel to the Trump White House in the president’s first term and has also worked as his personal attorney, was announced as interim dean at FIU’s College of Law in a meeting with law school faculty on Monday.
Epstein will take over for Michelle D. Mason, who has served in the interim role since May 2025, when former dean Antony Page stepped down. He will start in August.
Page is now dean at Chapman University in Orange County, California.
Provost Elizabeth Béjar announced the news to faculty Monday afternoon. She said Epstein will meet with individuals at the university next week, and Mason will continue “in a new administrative capacity.”
“We’re all in this together. No one’s walking away,” Béjar said. “Transitions of leadership occur with a team always behind it, supporting it by its side. I fundamentally believe that we’re going to continue to thrive and be focused on the mission of the University, on the mission of the College of Law.”
Some faculty members at the meeting were skeptical about Epstein’s hire, given his political background. Béjar said she recognized their concerns, suggested they read up on his legal research and offered some reassurances that he would not “wholesale” change the school.
“He is not going to come in and make administrative appointments and wholesale change the structure of the college,” Béjar said.
Epstein is one of several politically connected Republicans to have earned top roles at one of Florida’s public universities in recent years. Former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez was hired as president of FIU last year at the request of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Earlier this month, Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas was named the new president of Polk State College; Kamoutsas’ predecessor, Manny Diaz, Jr., was hired to lead the University of West Florida in January; former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner took the top job at Florida Atlantic University last year.
In higher education, Epstein has served as the chair of Palm Beach State College for nearly a year. He has also worked as a professor at St. Thomas University’s Benjamin L. Crump College of Law for more than three years, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Epstein has an extensive background in conservative legal circles.
He represented Trump in a personal capacity in the president’s suit against the Justice Department for its investigation into possible ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign as well as a 2022 FBI-led search for classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
In Trump’s first term in office, Epstein worked as “Senior Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to the President” in the White House. He was nominated to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 2019, but his nomination was returned to the president after the Senate neither confirmed nor rejected the nomination in six months.
Epstein now serves as vice president of America First Legal, the conservative litigation group founded by Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who has led the president’s crackdowns on illegal immigration. He has also been an advisor to the U.S. Department of Commerce under Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Epstein founded Cause of Action, a public interest law firm that represented plaintiffs in the Supreme Court of the United States case that curtailed federal agencies’ regulatory power, a ruling cheered by anti-regulation conservatives.
In Florida, Epstein was a member of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s transition team. He’s also a member of the judicial nomination committee for the state’s Fourth District Court of Appeal.
At the meeting, Béjar framed Epstein’s hire as a way to position FIU College of Law to thrive while other schools decline. Decreased birthrates in the U.S. have led to dwindling enrollment at some postsecondary institutions.
“There are universities around the country that are contracting, they are shedding departments, they are shedding faculty, staff around the country. And perhaps [it’s] novel, but what we’re trying to do is to ensure that FIU thrives on the other side of this transformation in higher education reform,” Béjar said.
“I can appreciate it’s change, and I can appreciate it’s different, and if it doesn’t work we can have a different conversation,” she added.
Epstein earned his bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College in Ohio. He got his law degree from Emory University and earned his PhD from George Washington University in 2022.
Recent history at FIU
Before Epstein was named interim dean, FIU had conducted a months-long search process for a permanent dean. Epstein was not one of the finalists announced in March.
Finalists included David Brennen, former dean of the University of Kentucky’s law school; Andrew Dawson, vice dean for academic affairs at the University of Miami’s School of Law; and Sean M. O’Connor, formerly of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. None of them were selected.
“I do know that the process has been a little bit more extended, and I recognize and I own that I slow-walked it for the last month or so, because I wanted to make sure that all the things that we collectively value at FIU and the College of Law are in good hands,” Béjar said.
Prior to Page’s tenure as dean, from 2018 to 2025, the previous dean for eight years was Alex Acosta, a Miami native and former U.S. Secretary of Labor in Trump’s first term. Acosta resigned from his Washington role after facing scrutiny over a plea deal brokered with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (no apparent relation to Daniel Epstein).
FIU’s College of Law was founded in 2000. U.S. News & World Report ranks it as the 77th-best law school in the country, behind schools at Florida State University and the University of Florida, which are tied for 34th. The University of Miami’s School of Law is ranked 70th.
This story was originally published June 29, 2026 at 3:24 PM.