Norman Eisen

Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.) is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings who is widely recognized as one of our nation’s “good-government giants.” He is an attorney who has served in senior roles in the White House, as a diplomat abroad, and led a presidential impeachment in Congress. His Brookings scholarship includes six books and over 300 other published works about rule of law and democracy.  

From 2009 to 2011, Eisen was special counsel and special assistant to President Barack Obama for ethics and government reform. The press dubbed him “Mr. No” and the “Ethics Czar” for his tough anti-corruption approach. He also advised the president on lobbying regulation, campaign finance law, and open government issues, helping to assure the most scandal-free White House in modern history. He was the White House Counsel lead on the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform and other aspects of recovery from the Great Recession.  

After his White House role, Eisen served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. He developed innovative anti-corruption and transparency strategies in cooperation with U.S. and Czech law enforcement and other stakeholders. Eisen also helped advance U.S.-Czech security and defense initiatives, as well as deepening economic ties between the two nations. 

From 2019 to 2020, Eisen served as the special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the impeachment and trial of President Trump. Eisen was a “critical force in building the case for impeachment” (Washington Post). His book about his service in this role, “A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump” (Crown 2020), was praised as “tantalizing” (New York Times) and as “an important piece of the historical record” (Just Security). 

Eisen is also the author of “The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House” (Crown 2018) and “States United: A Survival Guide for Our Democracy” (Cornell University Press 2022) as well as the editor of “Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy” (Brookings Institution Press 2022), “Democracy’s Defenders: U.S. Embassy Prague, The Fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and Its Aftermath” (Brookings Institution Press 2020), and “Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial” (SDDF Books 2024). 

At Brookings, Eisen is the lead author of the “Democracy Playbook 2025,” offering a roadmap backed by social science for countries to prevent and reverse democratic backsliding, and “The Anatomy of Illiberal States,” analyzing tactics for identifying and combatting autocracy. He has also published key recommendations for advancing an anti-corruption agenda and democratic future, including multiple detailed reports on Ukraine’s anti-corruption journey. He is the current chair of Brookings Anti-Corruption, Democracy, and Security (ACDS) project, a multi-year initiative focused on tackling corruption to promote democracy and security on a global scale. In this role, Eisen has successfully facilitated dozens of expert convenings to share best practices and promote collaboration among international stakeholders. The ACDS project builds upon his earlier Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption (LTRC) program, which was a forerunner in identifying and recommending best practices in transparency and accountability to fight corruption along the natural resource value chain. Eisen also co-chairs the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group.  

As a leading voice for accountability in the U.S. and abroad, Eisen has been recognized as “at the very pinnacle” of the lawyers who provided public analysis on President Donald Trump’s criminal indictments. That included his definitive reports on all four prosecutions of Trump—the federal January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases, the Georgia and New York state ones—as well as the New York civil fraud trial. 

Before entering the Obama administration, Eisen was a partner at the D.C. law firm, Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, where he specialized in litigation and investigations. His cases included Enron, the ADM antitrust case, the subprime financial collapse, the Clinton impeachment, and the 2000 and 2004 presidential recounts. He was named one of DC’s top lawyers by Washingtonian Magazine. He currently provides pro bono legal representation through his law firm, Eisen PLLC, including to the Democracy Defenders PAC. 

Eisen received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991 and his B.A. from Brown University in 1985, both with honors. He has been profiled in The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, and Tablet. He was named in the Politico 50 list of thinkers shaping American politics and the Forward 50 list of American Jews. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC , The Atlantic, Politico, USA Today, and many other publications in the United States and internationally. He is the co-founder of The Contrarian, a new media venture dedicated to publishing independent coverage of pro-democracy topics. Additionally, he provides commentary for television networks such as CNN, where he served as a legal analyst from 2017 to 2025. He is the co-founder and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund, a co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action, the founder and former chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the founder and former chair of the States United Democracy Center.   

Eisen was credited by director Wes Anderson as an inspiration for the character of the crusading lawyer Deputy Kovacs in the 2014 film “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”