COLUMBIA, S.C. — At least one member of the Republican National Committee is trying to slow Donald Trump’s attempted takeover of the organization by keeping the committee neutral until Trump is officially the presidential nominee and preventing him from receiving his legal bills.
Two draft resolutions are being circulated by Henry Barbour, a national committee member from Mississippi, for consideration at the RNC’s upcoming March meeting in Houston. Barbour said support for the resolutions is growing among RNC members, but he does not yet have the necessary co-sponsors, and that any resolutions would ultimately be non-binding.
The effort comes after Trump last week publicly called for replacing the current leaders of the RNC and installing one of his senior campaign advisers and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in top roles. Lara Trump suggested earlier this week that Republican voters would support the commission in paying her father-in-law’s legal bills as he faces a series of criminal and civil charges.
Trump’s senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, who wants to appoint the former president as the party’s chief operating officer, told reporters Friday evening that the RNC would not pay Trump’s legal bills.
One of Barbour’s proposed resolutions states that the RNC and its leadership will remain neutral during the presidential primaries and will not hire additional staff from active campaigns until a candidate has the necessary delegates to be nominated.
The second resolution says the organization will not pay the legal bills of any candidate for federal or state office, but will instead focus its spending on efforts directly related to the 2024 elections.
“The RNC has one job. That is winning elections,” Barbour said. “I believe that RNC funds should be spent solely on winning elections, on political spending, and not on legal bills.”
The RNC paid some of Trump’s legal bills for cases in New York that began while he was president, the Washington Post reported, but current chair Ronna McDaniel said in November 2022 that the RNC would stop paying once Trump returns became a candidate and would stand for election. the 2024 presidential elections.
Trump spends millions on lawyers in civil cases and four criminal cases, but he also has legal debts of up to half a billion dollars.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s last major challenger in the Republican primaries and who faced him in her home state’s contest on Saturday, said a family member or campaign manager should not lead the RNC.
“I hope that people in the RNC know that they have a responsibility, a responsibility to put people in the RNC who will look out for the best interests of the entire Republican Party, not just one person,” Haley said. said.
The resolutions were first reported by The Dispatch on Saturday.
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Columbia, South Carolina, and Meg Kinnard in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
