Blinken’s stain on Albania
AS if Secretary of State Antony Blinken weren’t embroiled in enough foreign debacles, he now stands accused of meddling in Albanian elections on behalf of billionaire financier George Soros and is being sued for defamation in an international court as a result.
One of Blinken’s curious first actions on being sworn in last year was to sanction the former president and prime minister of Albania, Sali Berisha, the anti-communist ally of Presidents H.W. and W. Bush, and who is a vocal opponent of Soros and his Open Society Foundations, which has been pushing judicial and electoral “reform” in Albania.
In an official statement and accompanying tweet last April, Blinken alleged that Berisha is “corrupt” and had “undermined democracy in Albania,” and barred him, his wife and two children from entering the US.
Berisha strenuously denies the allegations, is outraged that Blinken never provided any proof, claims the US government is trying to prop up the socialist Albanian government of Soros ally Prime Minister Edi Rama and has launched a defamation action against the secretary in a Paris court. Last year, the correctional tribunal of Paris agreed to hear his case.
“Never in my life was I accused by a person or an institution of corruption,” Berisha said on the phone from the Albanian capital Tirana. “The opposite was true. I worked very closely with the US government in fighting corruption.”
The problem with Soros
He says that the sanctions are retaliation for his attempt to declare Soros “persona non grata” in Albania after he grew concerned at the malign influence of Soros’ Open Society Foundations on his country.
“I’ve never had a personal problem with George Soros. The problem is first he helped Albania to have civil society and I was thankful but in a short time it became crystal clear that he was creating a monastic model of civil society . . .
“The Soros group dictated everything. So we have now a justice system, totally controlled by the government . . . The heads of judiciary institutions, in violation of constitutional laws, are for the moment former communist prosecutors.”
Berisha, a cardiologist who led the movement to topple Albania’s communist dictatorship, served as the first non-communist president of Albania from 1992 and later as its prime minister and opposition leader.
New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin smells a rat, and has demanded three times that Blinken provide evidence to back up his corruption allegations against Berisha. During a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting last June, Zeldin said the move came “seemingly out of nowhere.”
Zeldin said Berisha “was also known to be an aggressive opponent of George Soros. What specific information can you share with the committee at this time to justify this dramatic move?”
‘Unacceptable and suspicious’
Matt Palumbo claims in his new book “The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros” that Blinken has family ties to Soros.
He points to the fact that the secretary of state’s father, Donald Blinken, the former US ambassador to Hungary, and his wife Vera funded the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at the Central European University in Budapest, which was founded and funded by Soros.
Palumbo also cites a Soros Foundations Network report from 2002, in which Donald Blinken is listed on the Board of Trustees for the university, with Soros as chairman.
After Antony Blinken was confirmed as secretary of state, Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet called it “great news for George Soros.”
In November, Zeldin again wrote to Blinken demanding he justify his actions in Albania.
“This is now my third request for additional information since raising the issue of sanctioning Sali Berisha with Secretary Blinken during the June 7, 2021 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing,” Zeldin wrote.
“Congress plays an important oversight role for the executive branch including the Department of State, yet my office has received alarmingly few details in response to my inquiries. It is unacceptable and suspicious that the Department of State has not sufficiently fulfilled this request for additional information in a timely manner and has instead chosen to slow-walk a Congressional request for transparency.”
Blinken needs to come clean. If he has evidence that Berisha is corrupt, he should make it public. Otherwise, America’s reputation is damaged.