{"id":852203,"date":"2026-09-18T14:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/852203\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T14:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:40:10","slug":"pay-for-play-trumps-bosnia-moves-highlighted-in-u-s-house-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/852203\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cPay for Play?\u201d Trump\u2019s Bosnia Moves Highlighted in U.S. House Probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only hours ahead of a Sept. 15 House subcommittee hearing on the direction of U.S. policy in the Western Balkans, the office of U.S. Rep. William R. Keating released a report<\/a> on behalf of a group of Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee entitled \u201cPay for Play in the Balkans: How the Trump Administration\u2019s Bosnia Policy Enriches the President\u2019s Personal Allies and Shortchanges the American People.\u201d It focuses on the Trump administration\u2019s contentious recent interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report\u2019s central allegations are that the administration has made \u201ctwo corrupt decisions that have netted more than $1 billion for President Trump\u2019s political allies, undermined Bosnia\u2019s path to European integration, and threatened the stability of the entire region.\u201d The deal at issue involves recognizable names in the United States \u2013 Trump-pardoned convicted felons Michael Flynn and Rod Blagojevich \u2013 as well as a Trump campaign lawyer and a gas pipeline.<\/p>\n

The report comes less than a month ahead of Bosnia and Herzegovina\u2019s next general elections on Oct. 4<\/a>, and less than two months ahead of the U.S. midterms. In Bosnia, its contents will provide fodder for opponents of separatist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, including ethnic Serbs who hope to end his party\u2019s 20-year dominion over the majority-Serb \u201centity,\u201d Republika Srpska (the RS), created under the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended a war that killed more than 100,000 people. In the United States, should Democrats regain control of the House, the report could serve as the foundation for a probe into the administration\u2019s melding of foreign policy and business.<\/p>\n

The Keating report is a complex read, fitting for a country like Bosnia, which is often said to have the most convoluted constitutional<\/a> regime in the world. But its chief thesis is about U.S. national security interests. It alleges \u201cU.S. government resources are being wasted in Bosnia and Herzegovina\u201d to \u201cenrich a lucky few within the President\u2019s inner circle,\u201d and that \u201cPresident Trump and his cronies are upending\u202630 years of U.S. policy towards the region,\u201d and that the president \u201chas rewarded his affiliates with taxpayer-funded settlements and support.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Specifically, the report asserts that when the Trump administration \u201cremoved longstanding bipartisan sanctions from Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, his family, and his friends\u201d in October 2025, it did so at the behest of MAGA-aligned lobbyists<\/a>, including Flynn and Blagojevich, both convicted felons who were pardoned by Trump. The United States at the time defended the lifting of sanctions<\/a> as a reward for Dodik\u2019s governing SNSD party withdrawing an omnibus secessionist law in the RS entity assembly \u2013 even though the same law had already been struck down by the Bosnian courts.<\/p>\n

But in the aftermath, the administration allegedly \u201cconcurrently facilitated the awarding of a concession worth over $1 billion for Bosnia\u2019s politically sensitive Southern Interconnection Gas Pipeline (SIC) to a company [AAFS Ltd.] with no regional or sectoral experience,\u201d according to the Keating report. Though the company apparently lacked relevant experience, it does have connections: it is operated by direct associates of both Dodik and Trump \u2013 namely, Joseph Flynn, who is Michael Flynn\u2019s brother and a 2020 election denier<\/a>, and Jesse Binnall, a Trump campaign lawyer<\/a> who was also the lead attorney<\/a> for Michael Flynn\u2019s $1.25 million settlement earlier this year with the Trump Justice Department.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ousting an Overseer<\/p>\n

The report goes on to note that, following the lifting of sanctions on Dodik and the most senior members of his longtime Russian-backed secessionist regime in the RS, U.S. officials reportedly engineered the ouster<\/a> of the country\u2019s internationally appointed high representative, Christian Schmidt. Dodik held Schmidt responsible for his removal from office<\/a> by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2025, after the former German Minister had imposed legislation criminalizing defiance of the country\u2019s courts and the decisions of the Office of the High Representative. The office acts as a supervisory body created by the 1995 U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and is charged with overseeing the terms of the accord. The 55-country Peace Implementation Council<\/a> that appoints the high representative has repeatedly extended the term of the Office, largely as a counter to persistent secessionist pressure from Banja Luka.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schmidt\u2019s ejection, Keating\u2019s analysis asserts, had two purposes. First, Dodik publicly embraced the SIC project, while the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo improperly pushed authorities in the country\u2019s other entity created by the peace accords, the majority Bosniak-Croat Federation, to directly write AAFS into the relevant legislation authorizing the pipeline\u2019s construction. The legislation passed in the Federation entity assembly in record time, with the support of Dodik\u2019s allies in the Croat nationalist political party HDZ, who had long obstructed<\/a> previous iterations of the legislation when it still reserved the core concession to the local public utility, BH Gas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second purpose of jettisoning Schmidt, Keating\u2019s report states, is that the newly appointed high representative would have as his primary assignment by the United States the imposition of a new state property regime, which would not only allow for the construction of the SIC, but also allow the Dodik government to sell off huge swathes of public lands in the RS entity. The implication of the report is that the Flynn and Trump families, including the president\u2019s son Don Jr., Binnall, and other political allies, would directly profit from the construction of this pipeline and the eventual sale of Bosnian public lands. And once that was all signed, the OHR would close, leaving the Bosnian state bereft of key competencies, more susceptible than ever before to renewed Serb secessionist adventurism, and thus undermining regional peace and stability.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As reported<\/a> elsewhere, it is that prospect of a rapid closure of the OHR without substantive rationalizing reforms to the country\u2019s governance regime that has especially alarmed the European allies and convinced them to block the U.S. push for a new high representative. For Brussels and other European capitals, the Trump administration\u2019s dramatic reset of relations with one of the most militant leaders on the continent, combined with its apparent drive to defang one of the last tools available to the international community to deal with Dodik\u2019s persistent brinkmanship, was a threat to their own security interests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In sum, the United States succeeded in pushing Schmidt out, but it has not been able to secure his replacement. Successive American-imposed deadlines have passed, and the Europeans are no closer to acquiescing to the appointment of Antonio Zanardi Landi, an Italian diplomat backed by Washington, and who Keating\u2019s report suggests would be inclined to \u201cdo Dodik\u2019s bidding.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rare Bipartisan Push in Congress<\/p>\n

Keating, a 15-year congressional veteran, is hardly alone in raising concerns about U.S. policy in Bosnia. Both Democrats and multiple Republicans have repeatedly<\/a> raised questions<\/a> about the White House\u2019s decision to lift sanctions on Dodik and his associates. And in recent days, spurred by the state-sponsored funeral<\/a> of the genocidaire Mladic in neighboring Serbia\u2019s capital Belgrade, the bipartisan U.S. Helsinki Commission<\/a> has explicitly called on \u201cthe Administration to fully implement existing U.S. sanctions authorities, including by restoring or imposing targeted sanctions against individuals whose actions threaten Bosnia and Herzegovina\u2019s peace and stability.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the White House, the prospect of a congressional investigation should Democrats return to power on Capitol Hill may be uncomfortably similar to the circumstances that led to Trump\u2019s first impeachment in 2019, in which the president\u2019s effort to pressure the government of Ukraine to raise charges against his then-political rival Joe Biden resulted in a nearly two-month long trial in the U.S. House. To be sure, Democrats leading Congress will have plenty of grist for the mill, and this may not alone rise to the top.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But should the administration find itself consumed by such an investigation, it would be the result of an unforced error. No U.S. national security interest was ever advanced by providing a political extremist<\/a> like Milorad Dodik with sanctions relief. And while even Keating\u2019s report concurs that advancing U.S. business interests in the region is a desirable goal, doing so via what is in effect a shell company was always going to result in political blowback.<\/p>\n

FEATURED IMAGE: Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik gestures as he addresses a joint press conference with the Hungarian foreign minister at the Foreign Ministry in Budapest, Hungary, on September 4, 2025. (Photo by Attila KISBENEDEK \/ AFP) (Photo by ATTILA KISBENEDEK\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only hours ahead of a Sept. 15 House subcommittee hearing on the direction of U.S. policy in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[7045,23,165064,1340,360029,37948,360030,8649,1070,131440,107708,360031,107573,170164,118439,3,245348,7269,57441,21,19,22,20,25,24,150452],"class_list":["post-852203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-accountability","tag-america","tag-bosnia-herzegovina","tag-congress","tag-congressional-oversight","tag-corruption","tag-dayton-peace-agreement","tag-democracy","tag-elections","tag-energy-security","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-house-foreign-affairs-committee-hfac","tag-michael-flynn","tag-midterm-elections","tag-nationalism","tag-news","tag-rule-of-law","tag-sanctions","tag-trump-administration-second-term","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-western-balkans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}