trump
While leading Trump’s outside midterm machine, the pair traveled to Republika Srpska for paid election work. The Bosnian Serb government they advised has aligned itself with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Trump’s outside midterm operation did not stop its political business at the American border. Two of its top men took hundreds of thousands of dollars each to advise a Russia-aligned government in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The New York Times reported that James Blair and Chris LaCivita traveled to Republika Srpska before its Sunday election while running a big-money midterm advertising campaign for Trump’s political operation.
Two people familiar with the engagement told the Times that each adviser was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington-based law firm retained by Republika Srpska’s government for counsel on voting issues.
The client is not some neutral municipality. Republika Srpska is the self-governing Bosnian Serb entity controlled by a nationalist party that, according to the Times, has aligned itself with Vladimir Putin’s Russia while spending heavily to court Trump and his supporters.
Blair had served as White House deputy chief of staff before taking charge of MAGA Inc., Trump’s outside political funding arm. LaCivita helped lead Trump’s 2024 campaign. Reuters reported that Trump initially threatened to cut them loose if the work created a conflict, then said, “They don’t have a conflict.”
The facts tell the story: the men directing the GOP’s midterm machinery found time to collect foreign-government money from a Putin-aligned client before its election.
