McConnell and Trump aides have been discussing an endorsement of the former president

WASHINGTON — Top advisers to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump have engaged in behind-the-scenes conversations for months that have included efforts to secure an endorsement of the former president by McConnell, sources involved in those discussions said.

The conversations, first reported by The New York Times, have been held between longtime McConnell adviser and consigliere Josh Holmes and Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita. The two men go back decades in the GOP campaign trenches, and their discussions on the topic began in earnest in early January.

The back-channeling comes as Trump closes in on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and gains endorsements on Capitol Hill. McConnell, R-Ky., whose tense relationship with the former president is well known, is the last remaining member of the congressional GOP leadership who has not publicly endorsed him.

McConnell’s office declined to comment.

McConnell and Trump haven’t spoken since before Jan. 6, 2021, and had a frosty relationship even before it collapsed entirely over the Capitol attack. Since then, Trump has routinely mocked both McConnell and his wife and former Trump Cabinet official, Elaine Chao, in both political and personal terms.

Although he voted to acquit Trump on impeachment charges of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, McConnell delivered a scathing speech calling Trump "practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day." In the February 2021 speech, he added that despite the Senate acquittal, Trump was not immune from criminal or civil liability for his actions.

“I recently reread it. I stand by what I said,” McConnell told reporters last month.

The month after the 2022