Ken Vogel and the New York Times just caught Chris LaCivita taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a pro-Russian Balkan government — in the middle of the midterm crunch.
George News, Editor
October 7, 2026
We told you.
We told you on May 28, 2024, in a thirteen-point thread that cleared a million views, when Chris LaCivita was co-managing the re-election and installing the wrong people in the wrong jobs at the RNC. We told you again when he lawyered up with the firm that represented Hunter Biden and tried to strong-arm the Daily Beast over the millions flowing to his LLC. We told you in February 2026, when he took the Cornyn check and went to war on Ken Paxton. We told you in June, when that war collapsed and nearly $100 million in donor money went up in smoke.
And yesterday, October 6, 2026, the New York Times — Ken Vogel, no less, the reporter who has spent a career on foreign lobbying and the consultant class — published the story the movement has been living with for three years.
While President Trump was crisscrossing the country trying to save the House and the Senate, two of the men steering his midterm money machine were in the Balkans. James Blair and Chris LaCivita. Paid, each of them, hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington law firm retained by the government of Republika Srpska. Election advice. Voting issues. A pro-Russian government that has spent years courting this White House, aligned with Vladimir Putin, run by Milorad Dodik.
They flew home Monday. The Times published Tuesday. The President posted Wednesday.
Mr. President, you already wrote the ending. Finish it.
What the Paper of Record Just Reported
Vogel’s October 6 piece is not a blog rumor. It is sourced to people familiar with the travel and the payments. Blair and LaCivita, who are leading the big-money midterm advertising campaign for the Trump political operation, spent part of last week in Republika Srpska ahead of elections held there on Sunday. Each was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington-based law firm retained by that government to provide counsel on voting issues. The sources said the work was for the government and not the nationalist party that controls it — and then noted that the two are essentially one and the same.
Under that party, Republika Srpska has aligned itself with Putin while spending heavily to court President Trump and his supporters. In the run-up to Sunday’s vote, the party warned that its hold on power could be threatened by the debut of voting machines — the same category of machine the President and his allies have blamed for 2020. The party won. In his victory speech, Dodik credited President Trump for the political environment that allowed it. Dodik had been under U.S. sanctions for years for undermining the Dayton Accords. Those sanctions were lifted last year after a costly influence campaign. Vogel is careful to note that Blair and LaCivita were not part of that sanctions push. They did not need to be. The pattern does not require them to have been in every room. It requires them to keep showing up where the check is.
A spokesman for MAGA Inc. told the Times the two remained engaged in the super PAC’s work even while they were overseas. Read that again. The men running the midterm air war did not pause the foreign contract. They stacked it.
On Wednesday, Vogel’s follow-up reported the President’s response. Blair, political director of the 2024 campaign, left a deputy chief of staff role at the White House in the spring to run MAGA Inc. LaCivita, co-manager of the 2024 victory, is a senior adviser to the same super PAC. They help lead it. They are guiding midterm strategy. Separately, they took the Balkan money.
The President wrote that they are “outside consultants.” That they “do not work for me, other than as outside consultants.” That they are “allowed to do work for others, just like all consultants in Washington, D.C.” And then the line that matters:
“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!”
Mr. President, the conflict is not a hypothetical you need to go discover. It was printed in the New York Times while your party is trailing, with the election on November 3. Steve Bannon told Politico Playbook the quiet part out loud: Gavin Newsom is talking about ending this presidency in 28 days “while these two grifters are out of the country,” and then asked for “a forensic audit of where the money went so the president has the information to hold people accountable.”
We do not need Bannon’s permission to say it. We have been saying grifter since the spring of 2024. But when the man LaCivita’s network has spent a year trying to swiftboat is now using our word, and the paper of record is carrying the foreign receipt, the argument is over.
Terminate them. Immediately. Not after a reflection period. Not after the consultants explain why a Washington law firm and a Putin-aligned government were a fine side hustle in the last month of a midterm. Now.
The Mountaintop, May 28, 2024
Start here, because the Times did not discover Chris LaCivita. We did not discover him either. We documented him, in public, when doing so was unfashionable.
On May 28, 2024, at 4:10 p.m. Eastern, George News posted the thread. It cleared a million views. LaCivita blocked us the next day. Classic.
The thirteen points, condensed, because the original is still up and still accurate:
He hired vocal anti-Trumpers into key roles. Charlie Spies — election-fraud denier, Hillary-world adjacent, a man who had called the President a threat — installed as RNC chief counsel overseeing election integrity. Spies was fired. Not once. The spin was that he resigned. Our sources said the President fired him, repeatedly. LaCivita kept him as long as he could, then kept him on contract. The chief counsel chair sat empty. There was no real election-integrity program. We named the loyalists who should have had the job: Paul Dans, Stuart McCommas, Bill McGinley, Jesse Binnall.
He leaked a fake “bloodbath at the RNC” story to the Washington Post. A handful of people were moved. Anti-Trumpers were moved in. The press got a show.
He spent his time sniping at loyalists and feeding private conversations to the Post.
He staffed battleground election-integrity work with people in their twenties and skipped the 2016 veterans.
On Mitch McConnell’s Ruthless podcast he praised Never Trump architect Jon Lerner and former Pence chief of staff Marc Short — the same Marc Short who testified to the January 6 committee and whom the President had barred from the White House.
His long orbit included McConnell’s Josh Holmes and, at the time, RFK’s Doug Stafford.
Dominion’s lobbyist John Garst landed on a “Trump Team” delegate slate and on the campaign website.
More than $4 million in campaign money had already moved to his own companies, without the transparency a movement funded by small donors is owed.
The endorsements ran toward McConnell-aligned candidates. The client list included impeachment voters, Anthony Gonzalez among them. He had worked with Karl Rove for George P. Bush and trashed Ken Paxton. We said then that he was suspected of helping quarterback the Paxton impeachment.
And he was already putting out hit pieces on the few loyalists still in the circle.
We wrote it as a warning, not a eulogy. The campaign could still be saved if the consultant was replaced by someone whose business model was the victory, not the invoice. The Substack version went up June 29, 2024: We have a critical situation at the RNC.
He blocked us. The operation kept him. That was the tell.
The Lawyer, the LLC, and the Hunter Biden Firm
Victory did not make him modest. It made him litigious.
On October 15, 2024, the Daily Beast reported that LaCivita’s LLC had taken in $22 million off the re-election. By November 8 the figure had been amended to $19.2 million. On November 12, Geragos & Geragos — Mark Geragos, the lawyer America knows for representing Hunter Biden — sent the Beast’s general counsel a letter demanding a full retraction. The letter, from Setara Qassim on Geragos’s behalf, argued that the money went to Advancing Strategies LLC for advertisements, not to LaCivita personally, and cited FEC records of about $14.8 million for that purpose.
We published the letter on November 19, 2024: Chris LaCivita hires Hunter Biden Lawyer.
Our response then is our response now. Paying the LLC is not the same as not getting paid. A consultant who routes eight figures through his own entity, then hires a celebrity criminal-defense brand to police the adjective, is not a man losing sleep over the small donor in Ohio. He is a man protecting the float. The Beast’s correction did not answer the question that matters: who owns the LLC, who draws from it, and why the campaign’s most sensitive work keeps passing through a private cash register the principal controls.
That question is now a midterm question. MAGA Inc. had roughly $415 million in the bank at the end of August, by the reporting that followed. In September the Times described a $138 million advertising blitz — MAGA Inc., No Going Back PAC, Safety and Affordability PAC — carved across about fifty races, heaviest in Senate contests in Michigan, Ohio, and Alaska. This is the war chest. The men with their hands on it just demonstrated, in public, that a foreign government can rent their time in the final weeks.
If a Balkan entity can book them in October, who else is on the client list the President says he does not know?
The Heel Turn We Predicted: Cornyn, Graham, Paxton
After the win, Susie Wiles went to the White House as chief of staff. LaCivita did not take a West Wing office. He went back through the revolving door.
By 2025 he was senior adviser to Lindsey Graham’s re-election in South Carolina, and senior adviser to Texans for a Conservative Majority, the super PAC built to save John Cornyn from Ken Paxton. The same Ken Paxton we flagged in point twelve of the original thread. The same operative who had worked the George P. Bush race with Karl Rove was now the hired muscle against the attorney general who had sued the prior administration more than forty times.
We published the vindication piece on February 20, 2026: Vindicated: George News’ 2024 Exposé. Six days later we published the other half of the grudge: The REAL Feud: Chris LaCivita’s Attacks on Paul Dans.
Dans was the name we put forward in May 2024 to replace Spies. He was also the architect of Project 2025. When that binder became Democratic advertising, LaCivita put the screws to him and forced him out. Dans later called the campaign’s handling malpractice. He then did the unforgivable thing, by consultant standards: he ran against Graham. LaCivita, now on Graham’s payroll, called him a loser who had parachuted into South Carolina to run for dog catcher after trying to torpedo the 2024 campaign.
Our sources told us the campaign — not the President — came down on Dans like a ton of bricks because we had proved, with the receipts, that Spies was fired rather than gracefully resigned. Score-settling dressed up as loyalty. The North remembers. So does the FEC.
Then the Texas numbers arrived.
Cornyn’s side, with LaCivita advising the super PAC and the NRSC machine in its traditional incumbent-protection posture, spent at a historic clip. AdImpact tracking put the pro-Cornyn effort at $92 million and up; the primary’s total advertising approached or exceeded $128 million. One of the most expensive Senate primaries in American history. March 3, 2026: nobody to a majority. May 19: the President endorses Paxton. May 26: Paxton beats Cornyn, roughly 64–36.
We wrote it up on June 6: Nostradamus Was Right: Chris LaCivita’s $95 Million RINO Rescue Just Collapsed.
A four-term incumbent, in a state the President won by double digits, routed — after the consultant class spent like the lifeboat was on fire. The same NRSC world that once employed LaCivita as political director found real money for Cornyn and a fraction of that urgency, in the prior cycle, for a battleground MAGA nominee like Kari Lake. Protect the club. Starve the insurgent. Cash the check. Lose anyway.
That is not an ideologue who had a conversion. That is a professional whose model has always been access to whoever holds the checkbook. LegiStorm’s trail says the same thing in plainer language: Pat Roberts, Rand Paul, FP1 Strategies, the 2024 co-manager title, then PLUS Communications, then Cornyn, then Graham. No senior White House job. Straight back to the protection racket.
And now, four months after that humiliation, the same man is a senior adviser to the super PAC spending nine figures to hold Congress — and a paid adviser, in the same month, to a foreign government the Times describes as pro-Russian.
If Texas was the receipt on domestic grift, Republika Srpska is the receipt on foreign grift. Same man. Same month-of-decision instinct. Different flag on the invoice.
Why This Is a Midterm Story, Not a Balkans Story
Do not let anyone shrink this into a foreign-desk curiosity.
November 3 is twenty-seven days away. The President is barnstorming because the generic ballot and the special-election record have the conference staring at a blowout. Newsom is on television talking about ending the presidency in 28 days. MAGA Inc. and its allied vehicles are the financial counterweight — the $138 million already booked, the hundreds of millions still in the account, the Senate map in Michigan, Ohio, and Alaska, the House races that will decide whether the second term can govern or spend two years under subpoena.
The men steering that counterweight left the country to advise another government’s election.
Vogel’s sources said the counsel was on voting issues. Sit with that. The 2024 co-manager, whose RNC left the chief counsel job for election integrity vacant after Spies, whose operation we accused in real time of staffing battleground integrity work with novices, took a paid brief on voting systems and voting process for a government that was warning its own voters about machines. A MAGA Inc. spokesman said they stayed on the domestic account the whole time. So the midterm strategy was being run from Banja Luka, or from the plane, or from a hotel conference room where the other client was the priority that week.
Republican operatives told the press this was shocking. One called it a legitimately bad look while “we are fighting for our lives.” They are late. Shock is what you feel the first time. We are on the fifth.
There is a second problem, and it is the one the President’s post accidentally confessed.
“I do not have any idea who else they work for.”
That sentence cannot stand next to a nine-figure midterm budget. Outside counsel is a Washington euphemism. It is also a security problem, a message problem, and a base problem. The MAGA voter did not send twenty dollars so the senior adviser could invoice a Dayton-entity government on the side. The enthusiasm gap Bannon named is not a mystery. It is what happens when the base watches the consultant class get paid coming and going, then watches the President have to learn about it from the New York Times.
Blair’s role does not dilute LaCivita’s. It compounds it. Two of them. Same trip. Same law-firm conduit. Same super PAC. If the standard is conflict, it is already met. If the standard is “ask them,” they have had months — years, in LaCivita’s case — and the asking is being done by Ken Vogel instead of by the principal.
A Pattern, Not a One-Off
Lay the invoices in a line.
2024: Anti-Trump hires at the RNC. A fake bloodbath leak. Praise for Lerner and Short. Millions to his own companies. A block on the outlet that printed it.
Late 2024: Geragos & Geragos, the Hunter Biden firm, deployed against a newsroom that counted the money.
2025: Graham’s campaign. Cornyn’s super PAC. War on Paxton. War on Dans.
Spring 2026: Nearly $100 million burned. Paxton wins by almost thirty points after the President finally steps in.
October 2026: Hundreds of thousands each, via a Washington law firm, from the government of Republika Srpska, during the midterm crunch, while still steering MAGA Inc.
No single item requires a conspiracy. The line requires a decision.
This is the decision. The future of the second term runs through November 3. A lost House is not a branding problem. It is subpoenas, frozen nominations, and a lame-duck clock started a year early. The consultant who treated 2024 as a revenue event, 2025 as a RINO protection contract, and October 2026 as a foreign side deal does not get to hold the map for the last month.
We are not asking the President to relitigate the primary. He won it, and the country ratified it. We are asking him to stop renting the aftermath to the man who tried to spend the base’s money against the base’s champion in Texas, and who has now been caught by the Times renting himself to a pro-Russian government while the midterms are on the table.
He has already threatened the termination. Threats are how consultants survive. Orders are how presidents govern.
What “No More Mistakes” Requires
Three things. None of them complicated.
First, terminate the engagement. Not a conversation. A termination. LaCivita off MAGA Inc., off the midterm strategy, off any quiet advisory that keeps his number in the war room. Blair with him, unless the President is prepared to explain why one of them was freelancing and the other was not. The post said “if there’s a conflict.” The conflict was the trip.
Second, the forensic audit Bannon asked for — and that we have been owed since the Advancing Strategies disclosures. Where did the 2024 millions land. Who owns the LLCs. What did Texans for a Conservative Majority pay, and for which ads. What did the Washington law firm pay for Republika Srpska, through which accounts, under what FARA or lobbying posture. The President said he will ask them who else they work for. Ask in writing. Publish the client list. The base funded this. The base gets the list.
Third, put the midterm money in loyal hands for the last twenty-seven days. Not NRSC alumni. Not the McConnell orbit that LaCivita praised on Ruthless. Not the shop that staffed election integrity with novices and then sold voting advice abroad. The President has the bench. He used it when he endorsed Paxton over the consultant’s client and the voters finished the job. Use it again.
We will keep the receipts. We kept them when we were alone. We will keep them now that the New York Times has picked up the baton.
Mainstream validation is not the point. It is the lag. Vogel did his job this week. We did ours in May 2024, and in November 2024, and in February 2026, and in June. The lag is how the swamp survives: by waiting to see whether the warning becomes a headline, and by cashing checks in the waiting.
The headline is here. The checks have been described, in the paper of record, as hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The election is November 3.
Mr. President, you wrote the sentence. If there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately.
There is a conflict. Terminate them.
We screamed it from the mountaintops. For three years. The future of the country does not have another cycle to waste on a consultant who was never ours.
The truth doesn’t expire. It just keeps winning.
Share this. Send it to the people who still think the 2024 co-manager title is a loyalty medal. It was a contract.
Contracts end.
Prior George News reporting: the May 28, 2024 thread; We have a critical situation at the RNC (June 29, 2024); Chris LaCivita hires Hunter Biden Lawyer (November 19, 2024); Vindicated (February 20, 2026); The REAL Feud (February 26, 2026); Nostradamus Was Right (June 6, 2026).
This week’s mainstream record:
Kenneth P. Vogel, “Amid Midterm Crunch, Trump Advisers Took Time to Help Russia-Aligned Government,” New York Times, October 6, 2026; Vogel, “Before Midterms, Trump Distances Himself From His Political Advisers’ Work Overseas,” New York Times, October 7, 2026. President Trump’s Truth Social post, October 7, 2026. Steve Bannon to Politico Playbook, October 7, 2026.
Spending and result figures from our June 2026 analysis drew on AdImpact, FEC reporting, and contemporaneous coverage. Balkan payment figures are as reported by the Times: hundreds of thousands of dollars each, via a Washington law firm, from the government of Republika Srpska. This is opinion and analysis built on public reporting and our own prior work.
GEORGE NEWS is reader-supported investigative journalism. If accountability matters more than access, subscribe at georgenews.org or donate at georgenews.support.
~GEORGE
