RNC lawyer Charlie Spies was ousted after sustained lobbying from MAGA influencers

For Charlie Spies, Palm Beach County was the end of the line.

Spies, a longtime staple of Republican political and legal circles, abruptly resigned as the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel in the middle of a weekend that brought together some of the party’s biggest dignitaries and donors, as well as served as an audition of sorts for potential Donald Trump running mates.

Spies was among those in attendance as the RNC-hosted events kicked off Friday at the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

By Saturday he was gone, fired by Chris LaCivita, a top Trump adviser who is helping run day-to-day RNC operations.

In a statement first reported Saturday night by NBC News, Spies’ exit was framed as his voluntarily stepping aside after just two months. But in reality, the move came after weeks of fighting between the more seasoned Trump-aligned political operatives who vouched for Spies and a collection of vocal right-wing influencers who have sway over Trump’s thinking, according to four sources familiar with the process.

The push came as a surprise to people who spent Friday evening with Spies at a reception and dinner, where he appeared in good spirits, according to a person who was with him.

The anti-Spies forces orchestrated a lobbying effort that involved talking to social media influencers and conservative news organizations to amplify past positions he took about the legitimacy of the 2020 election — an effort to portray him as an internal plant working against Trump's wishes on the issue of election integrity, which has become by far the most important issue to many base Republican voters.

“All the professional people loved him. He was the pick, and he had the support of many of the people in that regard he needed to have,” a Trump adviser familiar with the decision-making process said. “But there was a bit of an organized campaign to get to the president and complain about the hire, and that eventually started to break through.”

In a Truth Social post Monday night, Trump praised Spies' ouster only two months after he functionally took over RNC operations by installing some of his closest political allies in top leadership posts. At roughly the same time, Spies was hired as the organization’s chief counsel.

Trump posted Sunday night on Truth Social that it was "great" that "RINO lawyer Charlie Spies is out as Chief Counsel at the RNC." That post has since been deleted; a Trump campaign spokeswoman did not reply to requests asking why.

A Trump campaign official who thought Spies' hire made sense at the time said as recently as last weekend that he was "the best at what he does" and that he "knows the FEC loopholes better than anyone," referring to Federal Election Commission rules.

There is little doubt a collection of influential right-wing voices did not like Spies, but the angst did not all center on one specific reason, said three sources familiar with the decision-making process.

Not only was Spies seen as an enemy from within by those who viewed him as a holdover from a pre-Trump era of Republican politics, but that vocal crowd was emboldened by comments he made pushing back against conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

During a panel discussion at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference with officials who openly believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, Spies pushed back against the idea that voting machines were doing things like changing votes for Joe Biden.

“I may get booed off the stage for this,” Spies said, clearly aware the crowd of Trump supporters was not going to like what he had to say. “But I have to say that’s simply not true. There is zero evidence that’s true.”

The crowd jeered his comments, and after he was hired at the RNC, video of the three-year-old comments circulated widely among right-wing accounts on social media.

Spies internal detractors also did not like that he had done work for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during the 2024 GOP primaries, and DeSantis remains a client of Dickinson Wright, the law firm where Spies is employed. DeSantis ran a brutal primary campaign against Trump, some of whose most fervent supporters still view him critically — even as he and Trump have publicly tried to mend fences.

Then there was the official reason: Spies was just professionally stretched too thin.

“Working full time at the RNC didn’t fit with my law firm client commitments, but I remain focused on doing what I can to get President Trump elected as well as Republican at all levels in November,” Spies said in a statement Wednesday to NBC News.

He declined to discuss his resignation further.

The news of Spies departure quickly prompted victory laps from those who loathed him most.

“Charlie Spies is gone now because President Trump woke up to the fact that he didn’t want a RINO in there who is doing nothing on the election integrity front as the chief counsel. He ordered him to be fired,” Trump ally Steve Bannon said on his podcast Monday. “He wasn’t fired, so he humiliated him and perp-walked him out of the conference this weekend.”

“You’re fired, get out of here,” Bannon added. “That’s action.”

Beyond Bannon, one of the leading voices in the pro-Trump right-wing media ecosystem, criticism of Spies' 2021 comments became a common talking point for those who wanted Spies removed from the RNC. The prominent right-wing media outlet Gateway Pundit used the comments to portray Spies as a "rabid Never Trumper."

Those eager to get Trump to oust Spies also started recirculating his comments less than a month before the 2016 election that it is “extremely dangerous to make those unfounded claims” about rigged elections.

“Donald Trump should be focused on running an effective campaign rather than making false excuses for losing,” Spies said on CNN — a point noticed by some Trump supporters who view the network as "fake news."

“That has definitely hurt, but is also misleading on how it is being circulated now,” a Trump supporter familiar with the decision-making process said. “It’s being presented like they are new comments. They are, like, eight years old at this point.”

Though Spies has argued against some of the more inflammatory conspiracy theories related to the false notion the 2020 election was stolen, he has said in the past that he believes Democrats changed election laws and rules midcycle and manipulated the legal system as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which, he argues, made the vote-counting process less transparent.

“The Democrat tricks from 2020 won’t work this time,” he said last month when the RNC rolled out its election integrity program. “In 2024 we’re going to beat the Democrats at their own game, and the RNC legal team will be working tirelessly to ensure that elections officials follow the rules in administering elections.”

The RNC for the first time is setting up an election integrity office, which so far has 55 staffers, with the expectation that hundreds of lawyers will eventually be hired in key states across the country.

As part of the plan, the RNC will have front-line staffers filing injunctions and paperwork on the ground in real time; another layer of higher-level staffers will file formal legal challenges and push for recounts. All of that work will be on top of extensive research the party says it will conduct on each state’s election infrastructure, including things like specific judges who might hear challenges, and state-level election officials, a Trump campaign official said.

Spies was part of the team crafting that strategy and “enthusiastically embraced” it, an RNC official said, but it was not enough to save his job, as outside groups not only targeted him but also used his hire to make the case that the RNC had been infiltrated by those not fully in line with Trump's wishes.

“In selective lawsuits, the RNC has a great track record of winning,” the person said. “But remember there is tension between the RNC and a whole bunch of other groups who also file lawsuits. Those groups do not have as great a track record, and they have a vested interest in attacking the RNC and those within the organization they do not like.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com