Trump Is ‘Freeing’ U.S. Foreign Policy From Soros, Says Ex-Albanian President Sali Berisha

Sali Berisha is back in from the cold.

The Trump administration has lifted a Biden-era U.S. travel ban on the former Albanian president and prime minister, making him the latest conservative figure to win relief from America’s sanctions machine.

His delisting follows The Pavlovic Today’s exclusive revelation that former Bulgarian minister Alexander Manolev had been taken off the U.S. sanctions list — a decision that sent ripples through European capitals. For governments, political actors and sanctioned individuals across Europe and beyond, the question now is clear: who is next?

According to U.S. officials familiar with the process, Trump’s sanctions review is bringing “renewed scrutiny to Soros’ foreign policy influence and its impact on conservatives,” including through his Open Society network, which has long been a significant force in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

In a bombshell interview with The Pavlovic Today, Berisha accuses Soros of exporting a “left-extremist agenda” through political networks outside the United States and calls on President Trump and Congress to consider a ban on the billionaire’s overseas political activity.

“The Trump administration freed U.S. diplomacy from George Soros’ influence — George Soros’ foreign policy,” Berisha says.

Sali Berisha was in his office on May 19, 2021, when a State Department announcement on Antony Blinken’s social media feed upended his political life.

The US secretary of state had publicly designated Albania’s former president and prime minister under Section 7031(c), accusing him of “significant corruption” and “undermining democracy” in Albania. With that, Berisha and members of his immediate family were barred from entering the United States.

“Former President of Albania Sali Berisha’s corrupt acts undermined democracy in Albania. I am publicly designating Berisha and his immediate family members as ineligible for entry into the United States. We remain #UnitedAgainstCorruption with our partners in Albania,” Blinken wrote. 

For Berisha, the announcement was not just a personal blow. The former head of state told The Pavlovic Today it was a political detonation — one he believes was driven “not by evidence,” but by the foreign-policy influence of George Soros and his NGO network in the Balkans.

Berisha, now chairman of Albania’s opposition Democratic Party, recalled a very different encounter with Blinken more than a decade earlier.

In 2009, during an official visit to Washington, Berisha said he was received by Blinken, then a national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. According to Berisha, Blinken had been among the American officials who praised his record on fighting corruption.

Berisha also cited Hillary Clinton’s 2012 address to Albania’s parliament during the jubilee of Albanian independence, when the then secretary of state closed her remarks by saying she would tell “everyone who will listen” that  “if you want to see true democracy in action, go to Albania.”

Albanian politician said he was “very grateful” for Clinton’s visit at the time. “She honored us,” he said.“ I have had very good relations with President Clinton while he was in office. President George W. Bush — I received him in Albania. My relations with the United States were very good.”

How did a man once welcomed in Washington end up being sanctioned by the United States eight years after losing elections in 2013?

Berisha says the answer lies not only in Washington but also in Albania’s own political battlefield. In 2019, Berisha said, Prime Minister Edi Rama — Albania’s Socialist leader since 2013, whom Berisha described as “a total puppet of George Soros” — addressed him directly in parliament.

“Sali, tell Albanians, can you cross the Atlantic or not?” Berisha recalled Rama asking from the floor.

To Berisha, the line was an early warning that left-wing political forces in Tirana knew about — or were helping shape — the storm that would later break over him in Washington.

Berisha said Rama later told his entourage that Berisha had been sanctioned for “conspiring against U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans.” Berisha rejects that claim.

Two hours after Blinken’s announcement on X, formerly Twitter, Berisha wrote an open letter to the secretary of state.

“I told him, ‘Mr. Secretary, this decision is based on corrupt lobbying by Edi Rama and George Soros. Whenever you have a single proof, evidence or document whatsoever for what you accused me of, show it, and definitely I will quit politics forever,'” Berisha said.

He said he also told Blinken he would sue him for defamation before the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris.

“This was my stand,” Berisha said. “When I decided to sue, they probably didn’t expect it, and they got furious — furious about me suing. They sent intermediaries. They tried to convince me to drop the charge. I told them, never. This is my way of protecting my dignity.”

Berisha said the pressure campaign continued after he threatened legal action.

“The embassy sent people working with Albanian Americans, and I told them, ‘No. This could not happen,’” Berisha said. “They asked, ‘How could you sue a secretary of state?’”

Berisha said the State Department then sent Assistant Secretary of State Philip Reeker to Albania “with a clear demand to expel me from parliament.”

According to Berisha, the chairman of his party later came to see him after meeting with Reeker.

Berisha said he knew Reeker well, having met and worked with him several times.

“I told the chairman, ‘Look, tell him that, with all due respect, this could never happen. There is no nation on Earth that has done more for our freedom than the American nation and the U.S. government. But it is not for the United States to draft the list of MPs. That is the right of Albanians, and no one else. It is the Albanian people who will decide.’”

Berisha said U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim, whom he said had previously served as chief of staff to then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, later convened a group of Western ambassadors in Tirana to seek a European coalition to sanction him.

According to Berisha, Kim met with the German, French, Italian, British, Spanish and EU ambassadors and asked them to recommend to their governments that they also impose sanctions on him. But Berisha said the German ambassador objected.

“First, you did not ask our opinion when you decided to sanction Berisha for corruption,” Berisha recalled the German ambassador saying. “Second, you have absolutely no proof of that.”

Berisha said the exchange angered the U.S. side, but the German ambassador insisted.

“No, you have no proof,” Berisha recalled him saying. “And third, which was worse, you did it in order to help the government. But we believe the country also needs an opposition. In this way, you helped the government and dealt a blow to the opposition.”

Berisha said the pressure on him intensified after that.

“After they failed to convince other institutions to sanction me, like the European Commission or others, then they turned not only to isolating me but also to prosecuting me,” Berisha said.

The legal pressure escalated in late 2023. Albania’s parliament voted to strip Berisha of his parliamentary immunity, clearing the way for prosecutors to seek more restrictive measures against him while he was serving as chairman of the opposition Democratic Party.

The case was brought by Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Structure, known as SPAK, the country’s high-level anti-corruption body. Prosecutors accused Berisha of abusing his former office to help his son-in-law, Jamarbër Malltezi, benefit from the privatization and redevelopment of land connected to the former Partizani sports complex in Tirana.

Berisha has denied wrongdoing. He argues that the case was not an independent anti-corruption action but the domestic continuation of a campaign that began with the State Department’s 2021 designation. He and his legal team say the prosecution was politically motivated and encouraged by Prime Minister Edi Rama, whose “mentor” is George Soros.

The political context has sharpened those claims. In 2022, Rama publicly urged SPAK to act against Berisha, citing the May 2021 U.S. designation as grounds for domestic concern. Berisha says that statement showed the prime minister was seeking to translate Washington’s action into criminal pressure at home. Rama’s supporters have rejected that argument, portraying the case instead as a test of Albania’s anti-corruption institutions.

On September 11, 2024, after a years-long investigation, SPAK indicted Berisha on “passive-corruption” charges related to the Partizani matter. He had already spent months under house arrest. He was later released from house arrest under less restrictive conditions, while the case continued.

For Berisha, the sequence is central to his defense: first diplomatic isolation, then political pressure, then criminal prosecution. For prosecutors, the case concerns alleged abuse of office and family benefits from a valuable Tirana land-development project. 

Berisha’s request to Secretary Blinken for evidence drew scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

On June 7, 2021, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Lee M. Zeldin, Republican of New York, questioned Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the basis for the State Department’s decision to designate Berisha and his immediate family under Section 7031(c). 

Blinken said the Department developed the case through its normal process, including legal review, but had “nothing specific” to share with the committee at that moment. He directed members to the Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs for follow-up.

Zeldin also asked Blinken whether he had been in contact with George Soros regarding Berisha. Blinken said he had not personally had such contact, while noting that he could not speak for the entire Department.

Months later, Zeldin wrote to Blinken and another senior State Department official, saying he still had not received a substantive answer. He described the delay as “unacceptable and suspicious” and said Congress had an oversight role in reviewing how the executive branch applies sanctions and visa-restriction authorities.

The criticism reflected a larger concern among some Republicans. Sources said that if the evidence could not be made public, the administration should at least have briefed members of Congress in a classified setting.

The Berisha case has become more than a dispute over one former head of state’s eligibility to enter the United States. It has become part of a continuing argument over transparency, classified evidence and congressional scrutiny when the Secretary of State uses corruption designations against politically prominent foreign officials.

Berisha’s relationship with George Soros was not always hostile. Decades ago, the former Albanian leader said, he saw Soros-backed organizations as part of the democratic opening that followed the fall of communism.

That judgment, he said, did not survive experience.

“I think, as a man who dealt with him for almost 30 years, George Soros, in my view, has his own personal, left-extremist agenda,” Berisha said.

In 2016, he called on the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress to ban Soros’s political operations in Europe, and urged Albania to declare him persona non grata.

Asked why, Berisha accused Soros of corruption and of buying political influence.

“He comes to the countries, and his OSF buys politicians, sponsors politicians, buying them to follow Soros’ agenda,” Berisha said.

Then came the broader indictment.

“I think there is no one else who has corrupted more politicians on Earth than George Soros,” he added. “Soros was very active in the Balkans, more than anywhere else. But Soros was also very active with the left in Italy and other regions.”

Berisha said his position on politically controlled civic groups went back to the communist era. He said that even under dictatorship, he had argued publicly that non-governmental groups should not be controlled by ministries. “I asked publicly for this to be dropped, even in dictatorship,” Berisha said. “I asked publicly that the so-called NGOs not be dependent on ministries, but have some independence.”

After communism fell, Albania’s new democratic space opened almost overnight. But the civic institutions that might have filled it, Berisha said, were weak or absent. Into that vacuum came Soros-backed organizations.

“When we toppled the communist dictatorship, the country opened,” Berisha said. “The civil society, the real civil society, was missing, and many, many civil society organizations were founded, almost all of them sponsored by George Soros.”

At first, he welcomed it.

“I was very grateful to him,” Berisha said. “I thought to myself, he is helping to grow civil society, very important for democratic society.”

But Berisha says that optimism did not last.

“But soon what I saw was that he took all these NGOs and put them under the umbrella of the Socialist Party,” he said.

“That means we went back to what we had been, because we were under the umbrella of the Communist Party, and now NGOs were put under the umbrella of the Socialist Party,” he said.

Berisha said he came to see Soros-backed NGOs not as independent civil society groups but as political instruments of the left.

“Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, the left was social democratic, communist and Marxist-Leninist,” Berisha said. “Marxist-Leninists were left extremists.”

After communism’s collapse, he argued, those categories did not disappear; they migrated into the language of civic activism.

“But after the fall, George Soros’ NGOs were turned everywhere into left-extremist organizations, Marxist-Leninist organizations,” Berisha said.

“Their agenda is further than the communist agenda,” he added. “This is, to me, very harmful, not only to Albania.”

Berisha said his concerns later extended to Soros-backed media.

“I believe that his media, his sponsored media, is a kind of censorship,” Berisha said. “So if you ask me, there is no one on Earth that controls the media like George Soros.”

He warned that democracy would be at risk if other billionaires used their wealth in the same way.

“Imagine if other billionaires worked like Soros — buying here, buying there, and sponsoring such political activity,” Berisha said. “There will be no more traces of democratic societies in the world.”

Berisha said, he believes Soros’ overseas political work should be stopped.

“Soros, his activity, his political activity outside the United States, is to be banned,” Berisha said. “This is what I had asked, what I persist in, and what I think is helpful and useful for democratic societies.”

Berisha said he would be “most grateful” to President Trump and Congress “if they would consider banning” Soros’ activities outside the United States.

“He is disseminating everywhere his extreme ideology,” Berisha added.

The veteran conservative politician linked Soros’ influence to what he described as a radical ideology hostile to national identity, borders and traditional social values.

“I was a child in one of the most remote areas of Europe, but when I asked my teacher, ‘Tell me what the communist system will be,’ he told me, ‘It will be a world without states and without borders,’” Berisha said. “Now the doctrine is without gender and identity, and this is an extension, coming mostly from Soros.”

Addressing Trump directly, Berisha added: “Soros’ political activity should be banned because its left-extremist agenda is very, very dangerous for a free society.”

Berisha said he chose not to seek a designation review under the Biden administration, arguing that he did not believe it would be fair.

But after Trump returned to the White House, Berisha said he began the process convinced that the new administration understood what he called the “weaponization of justice” against conservatives.

“They are aware of the weaponization of justice in the United States, in other countries and in my country,” Berisha said. “So I thought, when there is no evidence, those who look at the file will decide. This was my belief — and it happened.”

The State Department has said delistings  issued for several designations made under the previous administration because granting them served a “compelling national interest.”

Asked what he believed that “national interest” was, Berisha again pointed to Soros.

“The Trump administration freed U.S. diplomacy from George Soros’ influence — George Soros’ foreign policy — because George himself has his own foreign policy, in my humble judgment, not always in line with the United States,” Berisha said.

“Since President Trump won the election, I see no more such horrible influence on U.S. policies and diplomacy in the region. I consider this a very positive development.”

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