Europe07 October, 20263 min read
Trump Advisers James Blair and Chris LaCivita Help Milorad Dodik’s SNSD Win Bosnia Elections
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Blair and LaCivita traveled to Bosnia to assist Milorad Dodik's SNSD in elections. They advised Dodik and were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for consulting.
7 outlets told this the same way.
Outlets did split on Azerbaijan Bars Hijab in Schools, Sparking Protests in Baku and Arrests →
Bosnia Election Advisers
James Blair and Chris LaCivita traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina to help pro-Russian Milorad Dodik’s SNSD win elections on Sunday, according to El País.
Milorad Dodik had traveled to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin five days before the elections, and Dodik thanked the support of the Russian president and Donald Trump as soon as it became known, according to El País.
The New York Times reported that Blair and LaCivita were paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars each” through a Washington-based law firm retained by Republika Srpska’s government to provide counsel on voting issues related to the elections held there on Sunday, according to The New York Times.
Trump’s White House chief of staff Susie Wiles met Željka Cvijanović at the White House on Sept. 21, and Cvijanović posted a photo saying the two discussed “the situation in BiH and the region” and looked forward to continued cooperation, according to NOTUS.
Trump Distances, Critics Fire
Donald Trump wrote on social media that Chris LaCivita and James Blair serve as “outside consultants” for his political operation and said he would “terminate them, immediately!” if there was a conflict, according to The New York Times. Trump also claimed that “Most likely they have numerous clients” and said he would ask them and end any relationship if there was a conflict, according to The Independent.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticized the trip as a sign that even Trump’s trusted advisers were starting to plan for a future without him, and Christie said, “If your top political advisers don’t pay attention to the midterm elections and instead are busy taking foreign money under the table, that tells me Donald Trump has stopped being their priority,” according to El País. MAGA Inc. spokesman Alex Pfeiffer dismissed concerns about diversion by telling The New York Times that “James and Chris hosted a team call with race captains on Saturday morning to go over recent survey data,” according to New York Post.
What Europe Watches Next
The reporting tied Republika Srpska’s election efforts to payments of “more than $4m” since the beginning of 2025 to lobbyists and political operatives linked to Trump, and it also said the issue reached the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera reported that on September 25 the court ruled that Republika Srpska’s lobbying acts and activities were not in accordance with the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Transparency International’s Ivana Korajlic said, “it will only be presented in a different way,” according to Al Jazeera.
El País reported that the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik holds no official post because the judiciary sentenced him to six years of disqualification from public office, and it said the presidency of Republika Srpska went to Savo Mićić and the Serb-Bosniak representation in the tripartite presidency fell to Željka Cvijanović. NOTUS reported that a White House official sought to distance Susie Wiles from her daughter’s lobbying work, saying “Susie does not discuss work matters with her daughters,” while it also described photos showing Wiles’ meetings with members of Republika Srpska’s pro-Russian leadership, according to NOTUS.