New York Republican Representative Lee Zeldin requested, for the third time, facts from Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding sanctions against former Albanian President and Prime Minister Sali Berisha, a critic of George Soros who has publicly traded blows with the far-left billionaire on numerous occasions. Probably-not-coincidentally, Blinken has family ties to Soros, which raised some eyebrows when he sanctioned Berisha earlier in May.
Regarding his inquery for any information on the “significant corruption” Blinken alleged of Berisha, Zeldin wrote on November 24th:
It’s been five months since I made my original request, which is substantially more than enough time to adequately respond. 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. 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.
Rep. Zeldin made reference to the Soros connection when initially questioning Blinken during that House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting in June about the drastic sanctions that came “seemingly out of nowhere.” “He 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?” asked Zeldin.
In response to questioning, Blinken denied having any communication with Soros, but said he can’t speak for anyone else at the State Department. When pressed on the evidence for corruption, Blinken said that all proper protocols were followed while providing no evidence of corruption whatsoever.
During questioning, Blinken calmly answered Zeldin while assuring him that he’d be able to provide the evidence for the alleged corruption after the hearing, but wouldn’t provide it there. And of course, that was all a ruse, and this evidence still has yet to surface despite multiple requests.
The State Department deflected in their initial (and only) response to Zeldin in June, basically arguing “we investigated ourselves and we did everything right,” writing; “[The State] Department can confirm it followed established procedures to determine he was involved in significant corruption at the time he was a public official,” but again, no evidence was provided.
In August, Zeldin replied inquiring about how it is that sanctions are coming now despite Berisha leaving office in 2013 during the Obama-Biden administration. Zeldin requested a written response and meeting with the appropriate State Department official to discuss in depth and review any new intel for the alleged corruption, and the process the Department used “that led to these sanctions eight years and two U.S. presidential administrations later.”
It’s the lack of response to those questions that promoted Zeldin’s latest letter.
And there sure are a lot of questions to answer.
As I document in my forthcoming book on George Soros:
Responsible for providing the facts on Berisha’s alleged corruption to the Department of State is the East-West Management Institute. The Institute is headed by a woman named Delina Fico who has the job title of Director of Civil Society. The East-West Management Institute is one of two Soros-spawned groups (the other being Central European University) that he says he “envisions as permanent institutions.” Fico was once engaged to Albanian socialist president Edi Rama, and later married Bledi Çuçi, one of Rama’s closest allies.
Evidently, Blinken can’t speak on behalf for anyone else at the State Department when it comes to their connections to Soros, or even his own father. Antony’s father Donald Blinken and his wife Vera funded the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Soros’ Central European University (CEU), which houses a digital collection of Hungarian historical documents. The trio has also been photographed together. In one Soros Foundations Network report from 2002, Blinken’s father is listed on the Board of Trustees for CEU third after Soros (the chair) and Aryeh Neier.
Donald Blinken was U.S. ambassador to Hungary from 1994 to 1998, right as Soros was setting up shop there, and he and his wife had close ties to the socialist government.
The daily blog Hungarian Spectrum, which boasts Soros among its donors, celebrated Blinken as a potential secretary of state pick after the 2020 election because “Hungary will not be forgotten in the next four or perhaps eight years in Washington.”
After Blinken was confirmed as secretary of state, Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet called it “great news for George Soros.”
And that raises the biggest question of all, is the Biden State Department doing Soros’ bidding?
Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros, Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
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