By Bo Erickson, Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would fire two top election advisers if their work for a Bosnian territorial government posed a conflict of interest weeks ahead of critical US elections, then concluded that it did not.
The two advisers, Chris LaCivita and James Blair, traveled to the self-governing territory of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina ahead of elections there on Sunday, according to a New York Times report on Tuesday. The newspaper said Republika Srpska’s government retained and paid them to advise on voting issues.
Trump was caught off guard by the Republican duo’s trip at a critical time in US domestic politics and was angered, a Trump ally familiar with internal White House dynamics said on Wednesday.
“Chris LaCivita and James Blair are outside consultants,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office later, Trump said, “They don’t have a conflict.”
The statement signaled a potential rift between a Republican president fighting to maintain slim congressional majorities in the November 3 midterm elections and the pair of advisers he had charged with leading outside campaign operations.
LaCivita and Blair did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the president’s post. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The United States, Russia and the European Union have been vying for influence over Bosnia.
In April, Trump called Blair “one of the brightest political minds in the Country” in a social media post as he stepped away from his role as White House deputy chief of staff. At the time, the president said Blair would work “to prepare Republicans to DEFY LONGSTANDING HISTORY AND WIN the Midterms.”
Since then, he has overseen Trump’s outside political funding arm, MAGA Inc., that has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars to boost Republican candidates nationwide.
But even with a Republican cash advantage over Democrats, the map of competitive US Senate and US House races continues to expand, threatening Republican majorities in both chambers.
LaCivita, a Marine veteran, is a well-known Republican strategist who helped lead Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson, Jarrett Renshaw, Steve Holland and Daphne Psaledakis; writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Michelle Nichols, Trevor Hunnicutt and Cynthia Osterman)
Comments