Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Winthrop Coliseum ahead of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, U.S., February 23, 2024.Â
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
At least one member of the Republican National Committee is working to slow Donald Trump’s attempted takeover of the organization by pushing to keep the committee neutral until Trump is officially the presidential nominee and avoid picking up his legal bills.
Two draft resolutions are being circulated by Henry Barbour, a national committeeman from Mississippi, for consideration at the RNC’s upcoming March meeting in Houston. Barbour said support for the resolutions among RNC members is growing but he does not yet have the needed cosponsors, and any resolutions would ultimately be nonbinding.
The effort comes after Trump last week publicly called to replace the RNC’s current leaders and install one of his senior campaign advisors and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in top roles. Lara Trump suggested earlier in the week that GOP voters would support the committee paying her father-in-law’s legal bills as he faces a raft of criminal and civil indictments.
Trump senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, whom the former president wants to install as the party’s chief operating officer, told reporters Friday night that the RNC would not pay Trump’s legal bills.
In a statement on Saturday, LaCavita said “the primary is over and it is the RNC’s sole responsibility to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House.”
“Efforts to delay that assist Joe Biden in the destruction of our nation,” he said. “Republicans cannot stand on the sidelines and allow this to happen.”
One of Barbour’s proposed resolutions says that the RNC and its leadership will stay neutral throughout the presidential primary and not take on additional staff from any of the active campaigns until a candidate has the needed delegates to be the…
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