Nick Oberheiden: Trump’s handler gets US embassy in Cairo
Donald Trump has spent years railing against immigrants, but Nicholas (Nick) Oberheiden is the kind of immigrant he has no problem with. The German-born federal attorney is, in many ways, cut from the same cloth as the president himself: a “Hollywood” type who loves the spotlight and thrives in it, yet wraps himself in an aura of tantalizing mystery. Now, his long-coveted dream of joining the diplomatic service is finally being realized: last week he was nominated as US ambassador to Egypt, and he awaits Senate confirmation.
The nomination came as part of a broader wave of appointments covering embassies and diplomatic posts around the world. It followed the Trump administration’s recall of 30 diplomats appointed under former President Joe Biden, among them US Ambassador to Egypt Herro Mustafa Garg.
The rush to fill vacant posts is no coincidence. According to Alexander Gray, a senior National Security Council official in Trump’s first term, and Elliot Abrams, Trump’s first-term special representative for Iran, who spoke to Jewish Insider last month, the Trump administration is racing against the midterm elections scheduled for November, fearing that a Democratic Senate majority could constrain Trump’s ability to install loyalists in key posts.
The scale of the vacancies is striking. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that over 100 US ambassador posts around the world remain unfilled, including those in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait. Oberheiden’s appointment in Egypt, alongside Donald Blome as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, may signal the start of a broader push across the region.
What makes Oberheiden’s nomination stand out is not just the vacancy he fills, but the precedent he breaks by filling it. The US ambassador in Cairo has traditionally come from within the diplomatic corps, from figures who have built long careers at the State Department, often immersed in Middle Eastern affairs. The chargé d’affaires during Trump’s first term, Thomas Goldberger, was a career diplomat who served in Baghdad and Tel Aviv; the same was true of former Ambassador Herro Mustafa, who had extensive experience in the region.
Oberheiden brings none of that, yet his appointment is entirely in keeping with Trump’s style. Across both terms, his senior staff appointments have favored figures bound to him by personal or political ties over those with conventional credentials.
Law, espionage, and recruitment
Oberheiden has spent his career as a lawyer in the shadows of power, defending businessmen, government officials and military personnel in cases of extreme sensitivity. He describes himself as one of few attorneys the US government permits to review classified files — some even touching directly on national security — in espionage cases where clients are accused of leaking sensitive information or acting on behalf of foreign powers.
Away from the courtroom, though, Oberheiden has long harbored a different ambition. As recently as July 2025, in an interview with Dallas magazine, he expressed a clear desire to move into diplomacy, despite having no background in foreign affairs, no formal training in international relations and no prior experience working abroad.
His path to that ambition is an unlikely one. Born in Germany to a family of doctors, his father and brother both physicians, Oberheiden chose law instead, earning a doctorate before emigrating to the US in the early 2000s. He picked up an additional degree from UCLA to qualify for the American bar, and along the way added English, French, Latin and Portuguese to his native German.
After several years at a large New York firm, he founded his own practice in 2010, building it around major federal cases and the defense of senior officials and executives. His firm’s website gives a flavor of the territory: cases involving “military secrets,” the inner workings of “US intelligence in foreign countries,” the sale of classified information to foreign states, and the defense of individuals the US government regards as enemies.
American journalist Will Maddox, in a piece for Dallas magazine, likened Oberheiden’s experience to stepping into a Hollywood thriller. Oberheiden routinely meets senior government officials — from FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors to Secret Service agents and Pentagon personnel — in secured rooms under strict protocols to discuss clients that include Defense Department employees facing espionage charges.
But defense is only part of what he does. Oberheiden also recruits clients to work for the US government. As he put it to Dallas magazine: “Nine out of 10 times, my job is converting bad actors into something valuable to the US. Even a bad actor can be converted into a trophy source of information to help the US with extremely valuable information.”
In Trump’s orbit
The ties between Oberheiden and the Trump world run deep and are well-documented. Campaign finance records show he channeled more than $1 million into pro-Trump and Republican Party channels during the last presidential election. In January 2025, he donated a further $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inauguration committee, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures.
Beyond political financing, Oberheiden’s name surfaced repeatedly in cases that orbit Trump directly, defending his allies, cleaning up political messes, and going after the international institutions that Trump has made his enemies.
He defended Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, when Cohen was charged with facilitating crimes on Trump’s behalf. The case encompassed tax evasion, bank fraud, and the now-infamous payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to bury her account of a relationship with Trump during the 2016 campaign.
He also represented a number of protesters who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol — when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol building in Washington to disrupt the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win. Oberheiden successfully kept criminal charges from being filed against his defendants.
Shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks he announced a lawsuit seeking compensation for Israeli Americans and dual nationals harmed in the attacks, to be drawn from frozen assets belonging to countries and banks accused of supporting Hamas, primarily Iran and Syria.
He also pledged to pursue UNRWA, repeating Israeli allegations that the agency allowed Hamas to store weapons in schools and employed individuals with ties to the movement. UNRWA denies those allegations, which an independent panel led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna largely rebutted.
No comparable cases appear in Oberheiden’s record on behalf of Palestinian or Lebanese Americans who are victims of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the occupied territories.
Among the president’s men
Oberheiden is skilled at marketing himself within Trump’s inner circle, surrounding himself with some of the most powerful people in the country. His personal Instagram account is packed with photographs alongside the most prominent figures in American politics.
His firm employs more than 100 investigators who are former FBI agents and Secret Service personnel, alongside former federal prosecutors; among them three of Trump's closest associates, recent frictions notwithstanding.
The near-total absence of any public record of his life before arriving in the US deepens this persona he has built. In every interview, Oberheiden projects the same carefully engineered mystique: less a lawyer, more a character from a spy novel who moonlights as one. He is always impeccably dressed, always smiling, always composed, every word chosen with a precision that makes each sentence feel pre-written. It has worked: search “federal lawyer” on Google and the top results all lead back to his firm.
Oberheiden does not maintain that image alone — it is a collective project. Jennifer Colunis, a former federal prosecutor and litigation counsel at his firm, offers a portrait that sounds almost too polished to be spontaneous: “Nick is a unicorn,” she said to Dallas magazine. “He is always flying all over the world yet is very accessible. He offers support but knows when to leave us alone; he knows to hire people who are mission-focused and self-motivated. I have no idea how he does it. He is balanced, even-keeled, and gracious.”