Katie Wiles Pictured With Rifle Beside Srpska Minister

A photo of Katie Wiles, daughter of the chief of staff to U.S. President Donald Trump, holding a rifle beside Zeljko Budimir, interior minister of Republika Srpska, has raised a new question in Washington and Banja Luka: who represents the interests of the Serb-run entity in the American capital? Republika Srpska is a neighbor of Serbia whose political course, including its ties with Moscow, regularly plays out across the Balkans, so the story concerns the whole region.

What is known about the photo from the shooting range?

Katie Wiles, daughter of Susie Wiles, spent two days in Bosnia and Herzegovina in mid-August 2026. In the picture she holds a rifle and stands next to Budimir at the RIS shooting range in Republika Srpska, which the minister, according to Bosnian media, visits regularly.

The photo was posted on X by the conservative Albanian-American activist Evi Kokalari, who said it was taken in August. It is a screenshot of a post from Wiles’s private profile, with a caption she wrote herself: “mostly work + a little serious fun”.

U.S. broadcaster CBS News verified the image by comparing it with satellite imagery and earlier posts from the same range. The position of the sun in the photo also points to summer.

Why does the visit draw attention?

Katie Wiles is a partner at the Washington lobbying firm Continental Strategy, which registered early in 2026 to lobby on behalf of Republika Srpska. The firm lists Alejandro Garcia, a former deputy political director of Trump’s presidential campaign, as the representative for Srpska, and says he is the only person at the firm who has contacted the U.S. government about the entity.

A spokesperson for the firm confirmed that Wiles was in Bosnia but rejects any link to Srpska:

“Katie Wiles visited the country in mid-August for two days with an American firm that was invited to prepare a feasibility study in the region.”

He added that Wiles has not spoken with any U.S. government official about Republika Srpska.

What do the White House and Evi Kokalari say?

Last month’s meeting adds to the attention: Susie Wiles met Zeljka Cvijanovic, a close ally of Milorad Dodik. The White House says Garcia arranged that meeting, not Katie Wiles, and that the chief of staff does not discuss business matters with her daughters.

Kokalari claims the opposite. According to her post, President Trump should not be consulting Susie Wiles about Bosnia and Herzegovina, because her daughter, she writes, has worked for Dodik for months, and Chris LaCivita and James Blair are part of the same circle. The activist dates Cvijanovic’s visit to the White House to September 21, says it raises the question of interference in another country’s elections, and claims President Trump evidently did not know what was going on. These are her claims, and neither the firm nor the White House confirms them.

This outlet has already reported on the arrival of LaCivita and Blair in Banja Luka. According to The New York Times, the two were in Republika Srpska last week helping Dodik’s party with its campaign. Trump then said he did not know who they had worked for and that he would fire them if a conflict of interest turned up, before softening that: Blair and LaCivita, he said, are independent consultants who do not work directly for him, and he does not know who their clients are.

The photo from the range proves neither lobbying nor its absence. All that is confirmed is that Wiles was in Republika Srpska and that her firm is at the same time registered to represent that entity. For now, only the firm describes the purpose of the trip, and it calls it work for another client.