Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign manager ditched his lawsuit against the Daily Beast without handing over “discovery” documents, including his tax returns.
Chris LaCivita settled his suit on a Friday evening, on the eve of a federal holiday, despite having demanded “triple damages” and claiming he had lost millions of dollars in business opportunities.
LaCivita had sued the Daily Beast over our Oct. 15 report by Michael Isikoff, the veteran investigative journalist who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, which disclosed how millions had flowed through LaCivita’s Advancing Strategies, LLC while he was running Trump’s campaign. An article by The Atlantic revealed how Trump had confronted LaCivita after our report and had a heated exchange on his campaign plane, telling LaCivita, “Sue the b----rds.”
LaCivita had heavily hyped his lawsuit, comparing it to a Marine dropping a grenade into a building; posting on X, “F--- around Find Out”; saying before the sole court hearing that he had “a date with the liars of the Daily Beast”—which earned an approving reply from a Washington Post columnist. After the hearing, he boasted, “I’m really looking forward to making my case in front of a jury.”
But on Friday night, the Marine veteran voluntarily settled the case with none of his demands met. The Beast did not retract the story, made no apology, and gave no payment, all of which are common in settlements.
Settling the case meant he did not have to hand anything over to the Beast.
The Beast had told the court it planned to serve 50 subpoenas in total to associates, business partners, and employers. In court documents, the Beast had left open the possibility of issuing subpoenas to Susie Wiles—LaCivita’s co-campaign manager and now White House chief of staff—and to Trump himself. Filings show that both the Republican National Committee and Coinbase, the cryptocurrency giant that made LaCivita a member of its “advisory council” in January 2025, were due to be served with subpoenas by the Daily Beast.
Subpoenas issued by the Beast to third parties were stripped of their power by the settlement.
The list of what LaCivita and others would have had to hand over in discovery included details of every payment he and Advancing Strategies, LLC, received; tax statements; bank statements; his contracts with the Trump campaign and its PACs; the Trump campaign’s audits; his previous payments from other campaigns; details of his current employment; and any offers of business or employment he had received.
The Beast can also disclose that the Republican National Committee has already paid LaCivita’s attorney Mark Geragos’ law firm a total of more than $650,000 for legal services, with the first payment on the same day Geragos first wrote to the Beast to demand we retract our story. It is unknown if Geragos’ firm performed other services for the RNC.
Geragos, who is based in Los Angeles, is not a traditional Republican attorney. He has defended Hunter Biden from tax evasion charges and represented Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL player who Trump told to leave the country for kneeling during the national anthem in protest at racial inequality. Geragos’ other clients have included Michael Jackson, the wife murderer Scott Peterson, and Bill Clinton’s brother Roger.
Public records show the RNC disbursed $652,191.66 to Geragos’ high-profile firm, starting with $50,000 on Nov. 5, 2024, the day of the presidential election—and the same day that Geragos wrote to the Daily Beast with a “correction and retraction demand.” The next day, LaCivita compared himself to Tony Soprano. The most recent payment was made in November last year, shortly after the only court hearing in the case. The RNC appears never to have retained Geragos’ firm before Nov. 2024.
The RNC retained Geragos & Geragos while LaCivita was its chief of staff, a role he held while co-managing Trump’s election campaign with Wiles.
LaCivita did not sue until March 24, 2025. When he did, the court filing said he “is” the RNC’s current chief of staff.
However, the RNC made Mike Ambrosini its chief of staff in January 2025, an RNC official told the Beast. It announced the move on Feb. 12, 2025.
The RNC’s director of communications, Zach Parkinson, declined to say when LaCivita stepped down. He said, “It is routine for the RNC to handle legal expenses for senior leadership if they stem from the work they performed for the committee, as this lawsuit did.”
The court case, alleging two counts of defamation and one count of conspiracy to injure another in trade, business, or profession, was brought in federal court in Richmond, Virginia, with LaCivita and his Advancing Strategies, LLC, named as plaintiffs. In a court document, LaCivita said he was the LLC’s only member.
LaCivita demanded the court order “punitive” and “triple damages,” saying he had suffered “millions of dollars” of losses to his business career, lost out on professional opportunities, and had his reputation tarnished. Geragos had already demanded an apology and a retraction in letters to the Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast vowed to defend the case and retained powerhouse First Amendment firm Davis Wright Tremaine’s partner Kate Bolger, and local counsel John McGavin of McGavin, Boyce, Bardot, Thorsen & Katz, PC, of Fairfax, Virginia.
Until LaCivita settled—on the eve of a federal holiday—a trial was due to take place later this year.
In the settlement, the Daily Beast added an editor’s note to the original story and to four other stories, which said, “The Daily Beast corrected and clarified its reporting concerning compensation associated with Mr. LaCivita’s work on President Trump’s campaign and removed a related podcast episode that could not be edited. The parties have now mutually resolved their dispute.”
That was on top of an earlier note from Nov. 8, 2024, months before LaCivita sued, which said, “The original version of this article mistakenly reported that LaCivita’s firm had received a total of $22 million from Trump’s campaign and affiliated PACs. Based on a further review of FEC records, the correct total is $19.2 million. The Beast regrets the error. The article has also been updated to make clear that payments were to LaCivita’s LLC not to LaCivita personally.”
LaCivita responded to his own move to dismiss his suit by claiming—wrongly—of the Beast that, “They admitted their ‘reporting’ was wrong and edited it (again) …so that’s a win." There was no such admission or editing.
Geragos told the New York Times that ditching the case was “what some call the journalist equivalent of a white flag of surrender” by the Beast, and that it was “complete and total capitulation.” CNN’s Brian Stelter, however, wrote that the Beast had “prevailed.” The Times noted that the Beast was “not required to apologize or issue any payment to Chris LaCivita.”
A spokesperson for the Daily Beast said, “We stood by the reporting, paid nothing, and the truth hasn’t been challenged. The meritless case is over. LaCivita and the RNC got nothing for the money they wasted on a high-priced Hollywood lawyer and a groundless lawsuit.”
LaCivita’s dismissed suit claimed he had lost out on business and professional opportunities. When the campaign ended, LaCivita did not enter government service, like Wiles. He has instead secured jobs as a “Trump whisperer” and been paid by campaigns at home and abroad.
Most recently, Semafor revealed that he is advising Warner Brothers Discovery, the owners of CNN, HBO, and the historic movie studios, on its mooted takeover by Netflix, a deal that Trump himself has said he will weigh in on.
In November, The New York Times disclosed that his firm had been paid $1.6 million by the Albanian opposition for advice on its campaign to re-elect the country’s former president Sali Berisha. LaCivita worked to position Berisha as a Trump-like figure, even saying he would “Make Albania Great Again.” The candidate was resoundingly defeated and still faces corruption charges.
In the U.S., LaCivita was appointed to crypto giant Coinbase’s “advisory council” in January 2025, a month before the Securities Exchange Commission dropped a lawsuit against the crypto firm. He is senior adviser to Building America’s Future, the Elon Musk-funded Republican PAC, and he advises America250, the non-partisan body that is managing celebrations of the nation’s semiquincentennial, thanks to an appointment by Trump. He was made a commissioner by Trump for the American Battle Monuments Commission and works as a consultant with the Republican public affairs firm Michael Best Strategies.
He has picked up multiple campaign roles, including at least four Republican Senate campaigns. In Florida, he is advising Byron Donalds, the MAGA-aligned congressman running for governor in November, who has already been endorsed by Trump.
The enlisted Marine veteran and Virginia Commonwealth University graduate was also a prestigious Pritzker Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago last year.
It is not just LaCivita personally who has prospered since the Trump re-election. So has his family.
His daughter, Victoria, is now the White House’s regional communications director. His son, Chris LaCivita Jr., who graduated from Virginia Tech in 2022 and worked as a digital marketing specialist for a hunting company, is now registered to lobby for dozens of clients through a Republican lobbying firm called Checkmate.
