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‘The biggest utility player’: Rep. Brian Jack sees star rise in Trump’s Washington

8 31
01.05.2025

It was a Sunday morning in Las Vegas in December 2023 — after a night of fights at UFC 296 — and Brian Jack marched into the Trump International Hotel suite belonging to his boss, the former and future president, with a message: He wanted to run for Congress.

The seat for Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District had opened up three days earlier and Jack — a Trump 2016 campaign staffer, first-administration White House political director and 2024 campaign senior adviser — was ready to make the jump from political operative to principal.

Trump promised Jack his “full support,” in Jack's telling, but there was one condition: The pair agreed Jack would stay on the campaign until Trump secured the Republican nomination. A March 8 filing deadline loomed.

Super Tuesday was March 5. Nikki Haley withdrew from the GOP primary on March 6, cementing Trump’s nod, and Jack filed his candidacy for the state’s 3rd Congressional District on March 7. On March 9, the staffer-turned-candidate appeared with his longtime boss at a rally right outside his district, where the former president publicly endorsed his aide for the seat Jack interned for 17 years earlier.

The timeline is an encapsulation of Jack’s relationship with Trump: a loyal, constant and omnipresent figure who helped the president at every step of his topsy-turvy political career.

Now the Georgia Republican is looking to continue that role from Capitol Hill.

Cheat sheet: 12 questions for Rep. Brian Jack

Jack — during a wide-ranging interview with The Hill in his Capitol office — said there is “no question” he still considers himself part of the president’s team, just from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I think he, today, very much enjoys having somebody whose career was largely shaped by him in Congress with a vote in this institution,” Jack added.

The first-year congressman is already rising in the GOP ranks. In his first months on Capitol Hill Jack, has been appointed deputy chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), where he will lead candidate recruitment; elected freshman representative on the powerful House GOP Steering Committee, where he helped secure plum committee assignments for a number of first-year lawmakers; and was chosen by the Speaker to serve on the key House Rules Committee.

“Is this guy the biggest utility player? Oh, by far. But what’s more important is this guy has the brightest future,” said former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who hired Jack to lead his political operation in 2021. “He may just be........

© The Hill