Top RNC lawyer resigns after rift grows with Trump

The top lawyer at the Republican Party is resigning after he cited conflicts with his other work obligations and after Donald Trump grew angry about his criticism of the former president’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, people familiar with the situation said Saturday night.

The lawyer, Charlie Spies, is a long-respected GOP election operative who was hired by Trump’s top lieutenants in March after the former president engineered a takeover of the Republican National Committee, which in recent years has been the party’s main operation in both fundraising and field operations.

Trump had approved of the hiring but later learned about additional comments the lawyer had made. Spies in the past had worked for, either directly or indirectly, former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R), Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). He was liked by Trump’s top advisers, who orchestrated his hiring even though they knew he was skeptical of Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.

“Charlie approached RNC chief of staff Chris LaCivita about potential time commitment conflicts and it was agreed that while we appreciate and value Charlie’s expertise and professionalism he could not do this role full time and still maintain the obligations to his law firm practice that he has spent years successfully building,” campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement late Saturday.

Spies had been tasked with leading the party’s vast legal spending and election integrity program, and his hire was viewed as a sign Trump’s RNC could attract significant party talent.

Trump aides had worked to save Spies from being ousted after learning Trump was angry about his previous comments. They’re trying to convince Trump that Spies was a stronger election lawyer than others and to forgive the comments, said people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. He was viewed as close with LaCivita and Susie Wiles, Trump’s two top aides.

Trump advisers have sought to remake the GOP in recent months, removing dozens of the organization’s employees and quizzing applicants on whether they thought the 2020 election was stolen as part of interviews to stay in jobs.

But Trump’s current team hired Spies, which was puzzling to some Trump allies and friends, who questioned his loyalty to the former president. In recent weeks, Spies had become increasingly involved in the organization.

Spies has been flabbergasted by the drama privately, a person close to him said, believing he had the universal support of Trump’s orbit when taking the job.

Trump has grown angry in the past with other Republican Party attorneys. In 2020, he grew apoplectic when he was told that the party’s then-chief counsel mocked some of the election-fraud claims in emails with other Trump lawyers and disputed that the election was stolen.

Spies is a widely praised Republican election attorney, having pioneered the use of unregulated money from wealthy donors to fund presidential campaign efforts for super PACs. He has represented conservative influencers in litigation against Twitter for alleged discrimination against conservative voices on the platform, and he defended the right of politicians, including Trump, to stand for reelection despite the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment.

He was fiercely critical of Democratic efforts to change voting rules in advance of the 2020 election. He has also sued in attempts to force the trimming of voter rolls, and in 2022 he won a court ruling that invalidated the Michigan secretary of state’s instructions to poll watchers.

Spies has also repeatedly defended the presidential election system as being nearly impossible to rig, citing the broad distribution of authority in managing elections. During a 2021 appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he said correctly that allegations of widespread voting machine error in Michigan were false and that repeated recounts in Georgia had failed to show any voter fraud in the 2020 race there.

“Let’s win the elections, and not get worried about things that aren’t true,” he said at that event.