As if Secretary of State Antony Blinken wasn’t embroiled in enough foreign debacles, he is now being charged with meddling in Albanian elections on behalf of billionaire financier George Soros and being charged with defamation in an international court as a result.
One of Blinken’s curious first actions when he took office last year was to endorse the former president and prime minister of Albania, Sali Berisha, the anti-communist ally of Presidents HW and W. Bush, and who has been in opposition for eight years. years, and who is an outspoken opponent of Soros and his Open Society Foundations, which have promoted judicial and electoral “reforms” in Albania.
In an official statement and accompanying tweet last April, Blinken claimed that Berisha is “corrupt” and “has undermined democracy in Albania”, and barred him, his wife and two children from entering the US.
Berisha strenuously denies the charges, is outraged that Blinken has never provided any evidence, claims that the US government is trying to keep the socialist Albanian government of Soros ally Prime Minister Edi Rama afloat and has launched a defamation campaign against the secretary in a Paris court. Last year, the Paris Criminal Court agreed to hear his case.
“Never in my life was I accused of corruption by any person or institution,” Berisha said on the phone from the Albanian capital Tirana. “The opposite was true. I have worked very closely with the US government in fighting corruption.”
The problem with Soros
He says the sanctions are in retaliation for his attempt to declare Soros a “persona non grata” in Albania after he began to worry about the malicious influence of Soros’s Open Society Foundations on his country.
“I’ve never had a personal problem with George Soros. The problem at first is that he helped Albania to have a civil society and I was grateful, but it soon became crystal clear that he was creating a monastic model of civil society. . .
“The Soros group dictated everything. So we now have a legal system, completely controlled by the government. . . The heads of judicial institutions, in violation of the constitution, are currently former communist prosecutors.”
Berisha, a cardiologist who led the movement to overthrow Albania’s communist dictatorship, served as Albania’s first non-Communist president from 1992 and later as prime minister and opposition leader.
New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin smells a rat, and has three times demanded that Blinken provide evidence to substantiate his corruption charges against Berisha. At a meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee last June, Zeldin said the move “seemed out of nowhere”.
Zeldin said Berisha was “also known as 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 de Vera and Donald Blinken funded Open Society Archives at the Central European University in Budapest, founded and funded by Soros. . .
Palumbo also cites a 2002 Soros Foundations Network report, which lists Donald Blinken on the university’s Board of Trustees, with Soros as chairman.
After Antony Blinken was confirmed as secretary of state, the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet called it “great news for George Soros”.
In November, Zeldin wrote to Blinken again, demanding that he justify his actions in Albania.
“This is now my third request for additional information since the issue of sanctioning Sali Berisha with Secretary Blinken during the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on June 7, 2021,” Zeldin wrote.
“Congress plays an important oversight role for the executive branch, including the State Department, but my office has received alarmingly few details in response to my inquiries. It is unacceptable and suspicious that the State Department failed to sufficiently comply with this request for additional information in a timely manner and instead opted for an inertia request from Congress for transparency.”
Blinken must be cleaned. If he has proof that Berisha is corrupt, he must make it public. Otherwise America’s reputation will be damaged.
Hof gets swing on Bidens’ friend
Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, best friend and fellow Yale alumnus, will finally be sentenced later this month, which could end the jet-set lifestyle he indulged in while on bail.
Archer, 47, lost his Supreme Court appeal in December to overturn his 2018 criminal conviction over a $60 million plan to defraud a Native American tribe.
The president’s son has never been charged or allegedly involved in the fraud. But the court heard that his name was being used as a selling point, and he was described in promotional brochures as vice chairman of Burnham Financial Group, the company at the center of the scam.
Unlike Archer’s friends Bevan Cooney and John Galanis, who were tried and jailed alongside him in 2018, his conviction was overturned by U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams.
Judge Abrams, an Obama-appointed man who was married to Mueller’s special counsel Greg Andres, said she had “an unremitting concern that Archer is innocent of the crimes charged.”
Her decision was overturned on appeal, and Archer’s last point of contact was the Supreme Court.
In the midst of his legal troubles, Archer complained to Hunter about his predicament.
“Why did your father’s appointees arrest me and try to put me in jail?” he wrote on March 6, 2019 in a text message that was found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop. “Why would they try to ruin my family and destroy my children and no one from your family will intervene and at least try to help me? I do not get it.”
Hunter replied with a dissertation on equivalent branches of government before assuring his friend that he would not be abandoned by the Biden family.
“Every large family is persecuted . . . you are part of a wonderful family – not an afterthought, not abandoned by them even in your darkest moments. That’s the way Bidens are different, and you are a Biden. It’s the price of power and the people who question you really don’t have it.”
Now Archer’s luck may have run out as he faces a possible jail term.
Perhaps the shock of his impending date with fate made him forget his golf clubs at the Plandome Country Club, where he’s played for the past year. A local saw the Yale-themed golf bag left outside Long Island’s private club last month. No word on when Archer will turn again.
* Miranda Devine is the author of “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide” (Post Hill Press).