This Obscure Balkan Territory Has a Lot of Friends in Trump World

A pro-Russian party in Republika Srpska has several Trump-world lobbyists on its pay role. What is it after?

After the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats — a pro-Russia nationalist party — in Republika Srpska secured a victory in the election earlier this month, party leader Milorad Dodik hosted a campaign victory party at a restaurant in the city of Banja Luka complete with an accordion rock band.

“If it had not been for Donald Trump’s magnificent victory, . . . we would probably be political corpses today,” he told supporters. The staunchly pro-Russian leader, who is himself barred from holding office, also credited Vladimir Putin, whom he met with in Moscow less than a week before.

Trump was not the only American whom Didok needed to thank that night. In attendance were two top Trump political advisers: Chris LaCivita and James Blair. The advisers, both of whom played a significant role in getting Trump reelected, lent their political expertise to Republika Srpska’s government leading up to the election, according to a person familiar with the relationship.

Upon LaCivita’s and Blair’s return, the New York Times reported on their presence in the self-governing Balkan state and their six-figure compensation for consulting services, routed through a Washington-based law firm.

LaCivita, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2024, and Blair, who worked as deputy chief of staff at the White House until he left to run Trump’s MAGA Inc. political action committee in April, are tasked with limiting the damage in what is shaping up to be a bruising midterm for the GOP.

With the Republican map shrinking, the reporting on Blair and LaCivita prompted rare pushback from the president himself, who frequently opines on the doom of a Democratic-controlled Congress.

“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!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Republika Srpska’s connection to Trump world is not limited to just his top two political advisers, one of whom, Blair, is expected to return to the West Wing after the election.

Katie Wiles, daughter of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, was photographed with a high-ranking official of the territory in August at a shooting range and was retained as a lobbyist to the tune of $35,000 a month, CBS News reported on Wednesday. Katie Wiles is a partner at Washington-based Continental Strategy.

Also at Continental and lobbying on behalf of Srpska is Alejandro Garcia, a former deputy political director for Trump’s presidential campaign, according to Justice Department filings. The firm confirmed to CBS News that Garcia, too, was in attendance for the elections.

Caroline Wren, a prolific Trump fundraiser, and Ryan Coyne, a Trump ally, along with two other lobbyists associated with CRB Global, a small D.C. lobbying firm, were retained by the Ministry of European Integration and International Cooperation for the Republic of Srpska in June, according to Justice Department filings.

Coyne downplayed his involvement in the lobbying efforts, telling National Review that his name was listed on FARA filings was out of an abundance of caution. Wren and CRB Global lobbyist Barry Bennett were also in Republika Srpska during Sunday’s election.

LaCivita and Blair brought their Trump campaign work with them on the road: The pair spoke at length with Bennett about new polling in the Ohio and Texas Senate contests on the sidelines of the victory party in Bunja Luca, according to a person familiar with the exchange. LaCivita and Blair talked up new polling they had received earlier that Sunday on the two races. Blair and LaCivita also ran a conference call on Saturday morning to review survey data with GOP campaign teams, Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for MAGA Inc., told the Times.

Republika Srpska, with a Serbian-majority population, is one of two main entities that make up the sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina — the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a primarily Bosniak- and Croat-majority area. The governing arrangement was established by the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995.

Critics of the Dayton Peace Agreement — which established a parliamentary democracy and federal-style power-sharing system, dividing authority between a central government and two highly autonomous entities — argue that it delegated too much power to the United Nations, which is tasked with implementing and safeguarding the peace agreement.

Under the Dayton Agreement, an international high representative is appointed by countries that support the agreement to ensure compliance. The powers granted to the representative are sweeping, including the authority to remove politicians who threaten the agreement and to impose laws deemed necessary to further implement the agreement.

Dodik is a vocal opponent of this arrangement and has asked the U.N. Security Council to challenge the authority of International High Representative Christian Schmidt, who has been serving since 2021.

Dodik was forced to step down as president of Republika Srpska in September 2025 after he was convicted by the high court of Bosnia and Herzegovina for defying Schmidt.

Dodik and Trump often find common cause in deploring what they view as U.N. overreach. Dodik and his American allies view their campaign against the Dayton Agreement as a broader battle against global governance and a fight to preserve local traditions, extending even to Christianity itself. Republika Srpska is overwhelmingly Christian, with a vast majority identifying as Eastern Orthodox.

In a statement to National Review, Wren framed closer engagement with Republika Srpska as an extension of the Trump administration’s push to assist Christians worldwide.

“The Trump Administration has made a huge priority of protecting and promoting Christians around the world and there is no better place to do that than the Pro-Trump Christians in the Republic of Srpska who have been demonized by the Europeans and Brussels for their western values,” she said.

Republika Srpska’s nationalist government has never shied away from its support of the U.S. president. On November 6, 2024, the presidential palace in Banja Luka displayed a lighted mural of a Trump 2024 campaign logo with the president’s image superimposed on the building.

Members of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats view the Trump administration as offering a pivotal opportunity to rewrite Srpska’s relationship with the U.N. and the world. By leveraging Trump’s willingness to rewrite the global order, they may be able to overturn the Dayton Agreement and replace it with something that provides independence and national sovereignty, according to two people familiar with the government’s thinking.

But while vocal support of the U.S. president endears the territory to Trump allies, critics say that the government’s ties to the Kremlin and implications of secession from the Dayton Agreement should give pause to the Americans working for the party.

“Lobbyists working for the Republic of Srpska are enabling a Russian-aligned secessionist movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina that threatens to undermine the stability in the Balkans that has been in place since the 1990s,” Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute told National Review.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced a similar sentiment in March 2025, when Dodik defied the U.N. high representative, calling it “dangerous and destabilizing behavior.” Working with Russia-aligned officials in Republika Srpska, Coffey said, is “playing with fire in the region.”

Herein lies the strategy for foreign lobbyists in the second Trump administration: sidestep the slog of the diplomatic bureaucracy and go directly to the president — or to his closest allies.

Justice Department filings note that CRB lobbyists requested several meetings with Trump administration and government officials months before the June filing “to discuss interests and relations” between Republika Srpska and the United States.

The meeting requests included Ed Martin, then a pardon attorney in the Department of Justice, and Paula White, an evangelical pastor and senior adviser to the White House Faith Office.

Ed Martin did not respond to a request for comment, and a White House official confirmed that a meeting with White did not take place.

CRB received $200,000 for March and April “consulting services,” according to filings.

Foreign lobbying is booming in Trump’s Washington. According to a February analysis by the Free Press, there have been 380 new foreign lobbyist registrants since Trump’s victory in November 2024.

It’s not just the increase in registrants as foreign lobbyists but the boldness with which those inside the Trump circle have pushed the bounds of what is ethical on the global stage.

Just last month, ProPublica reported that a Putin ally and Russian oligarch financed a three-day wedding celebration in the Bahamas for Donald Trump Jr. and his wife Bettina Anderson. Trump Jr., who also visited Srpska in April, reportedly paid back the “gift” last week.

Utah Republican Senator John Curtis called for an investigation into the exchange, likening it to scandals of access-selling that befell Hunter Biden during his father’s term as president.