The New York Times reported this week that James Blair and Chris LaCivita traveled to Republika Srpska — the Serb-dominated entity inside Bosnia and Herzegovina — in the days before Bosnia's general elections on Sunday, October 4, advising the government there on voting-related matters. According to the Times, each man was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the work.
That is what put it on President Trump's desk. Both men sit at the center of his midterm operation: Blair, the former White House deputy chief of staff who stepped away from the West Wing this spring to lead Trump's outside political effort, and LaCivita, who co-managed Trump's winning 2024 campaign. The Times noted the contrast — while Trump was crisscrossing the country last week trying to help Republicans avoid a midterm blowout, the two were in the Balkans helping a pro-Russian government tighten its grip on power.
Trump's answer came on Truth Social, and it was blunt. Blair and LaCivita are outside consultants, he wrote, and consultants in Washington are allowed to take other clients. He said he has no idea who else they work for — but he will ask them for a full accounting, and if there is a conflict of interest, he will terminate them immediately. In the Oval Office later, he added that there is likely no conflict at all because neither man works directly in the White House: they are not, as he put it, sitting around a Cabinet table.
The backdrop is the part Democrats are running with. The administration lifted longstanding U.S. sanctions on Milorad Dodik, his family, and dozens of associates last October — a reversal the State Department defended at the time as a reward for Republika Srpska's assembly withdrawing a secessionist law. House Democrats, led by Rep. Bill Keating of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, released a report last month titled "Pay to Play in the Balkans" arguing the delisting was done at the behest of MAGA-aligned lobbyists, including Michael Flynn and Rod Blagojevich, and paved the way for a pipeline deal benefiting Trump allies. The Times framed the Blair–LaCivita engagement as the latest example of Trump advisers cashing in with foreign politicians looking for the president's favor.
Trump drew his own line through all of it. Close does not mean protected. If they are not keeping it real, they are out.