Paying for the Sanctioned Dodik: Trump Aides Taking Payments from Republika Srpska Draws Republican Internal Criticism

According to The New York Times, two core political aides to U.S. President Donald Trump—James Blair and Chris LaCivita—were employed by the government of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina through a Washington law firm, providing advisory services for leader Milorad Dodik's political agenda, with each receiving several hundred thousand dollars in compensation. The disclosure has triggered a wave of criticism within the Republican Party.

Blair currently heads Trump's main fundraising vehicle "MAGA Inc," while LaCivita serves as a senior adviser to Trump; both were deeply involved in Trump's 2024 campaign. Al Jazeera, citing The New York Times and cross-referencing filings with the U.S. Department of Justice, noted that since the beginning of 2025 Republika Srpska has paid more than $4 million to lobbyists and political brokers linked to Trump.

On the other side of the transaction stands Dodik, widely regarded as the greatest persistent threat to stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In February, a Sarajevo court sentenced Dodik to one year in prison, banned him from holding public office for six years, and stripped him of his Republika Srpska presidency on the grounds that he had refused to comply with decisions issued by Christian Schmidt, the German diplomat serving as the international High Representative overseeing the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. Bosnia and Herzegovina's Supreme Court upheld the related ruling last November, barring him from running in the October 4 election of this year. On September 25, the country's Constitutional Court additionally ruled that lobbying activities conducted by Republika Srpska using public funds "were not in conformity with the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina," finding their aims at odds with the Constitution, the decisions of the Constitutional Court, and Bosnia's sovereign institutions.

The Trump administration, however, lifted long-standing sanctions against Dodik this year, with the official justification described as "pragmatic considerations and the easing of tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina." In exchange, Dodik withdrew a number of previously pushed unconstitutional statutes. The political fallout from the sanctions easing is plainly visible: on September 29, Dodik traveled to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, just five days before Bosnia's general election. Al Jazeera described the atmosphere of the meeting as "unusually friendly." On election night, Dodik's nationalist party, the SNSD, secured more than 55 percent of the vote in Republika Srpska's regional elections, preserving its long-standing dominance. At his victory rally, Dodik declared outright: "If it had not been for Trump's glorious victory, today we might already be political zombies."

Aleksandar Trifunović, editor-in-chief of the Banja Luka-based magazine Buka, told Al Jazeera that what Dodik paid the Trump camp for was not policy advice, but rather "access to Trump through Trump's people." He said Dodik's rhetorical style "has long since converged closely with MAGA discourse," and "we see nothing that would let us say 'they taught him something, so he won'—what matters is that he can say he hired Trump's people." He further pointed to the logic of the American lobbying system: "The more money you give, the more support you get."

The problem, however, is that this same Dodik is Putin's closest partner in the Balkans. Trifunović stressed to Al Jazeera: "The real criticism is something else: how can Trump's people maintain friendly relations with someone so closely tied to Putin? You can't stand on both Trump's side and Putin's side at the same time." There is another side to the legitimization of political access deals: Ivana Korajlić, a member of Transparency International, told Al Jazeera that Republika Srpska "won't stop lobbying—it will just present itself differently."

After the story broke, Trump initially told reporters at the White House that he would ask the two men about their other clients and would fire them immediately if there were any conflicts of interest, but later softened his position, arguing that the two are not White House employees and "as advisers may serve multiple clients at the same time." Politico reported that Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon bluntly called Blair and LaCivita "grifters" and demanded a detailed examination of the compensation they received. LaCivita had previously also served as a campaign consultant to Albanian opposition leader Sali Berisha—Berisha was barred from entering the United States by the Biden administration in 2021 on corruption and misuse of public funds grounds, and Trump lifted that ban in June of this year during his second term.