Without identifying himself, in spite of repeated questions from reporters, one of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán’s top US lobbyists, Richard Grenell, held a press conference this week in Las Vegas and alleged that American Democracy is being hijacked by the deceased. Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence claimed on camera that this is “what’s happening in the state of Nevada”. (See here) Prior to the launch of his lawsuit, Grenell joined Laura Trump, the President’s daughter in law at another event, where they claimed that “dead cats” were using mail-in ballots, to remove Trump from his perch in the White House.
While Nicolas Cage won an Oscar for his performance in the 1995 Hollywood classic, Leaving Las Vegas, Grenell will be clutching at straws by the time he leaves district court in Nevada. After his remarkable allegations, and the launch of a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump campaign against Nevada election officials, Grenell left the scene of his crime in a hurry. He refused to offer any evidence for his charges which are as baseless as his earlier arguments on behalf of the Hungarian autocrat. (For a video of Grenell’s escape from Las Vegas see here.)
Grenell is just one of the many faces of The Artificial Blond Bomber (copyright ABG) who is empowering tin-pot dictators around the world to oppress their citizens by a combination of brute force and disinformation. (Who can forget Trump’s endorsement of the bloody North Korean Dictator, by claiming that his friend, “Chairman Kim” loves his people as if they were his children”? Who can forget his embrace of the Saudi tyrant who made mince-meat of an American journalist in his Turkish embassy?)
Grenell is part of the late Arthur J. Finkelstein’s team of carpetbaggers, who became millionaires by travelling to the far corners of the former Soviet Empire to “field-test” the communications strategies that catapulted Trump to power in 2016. They are The Ugly Americans, who helped the local criminal classes to power in such places as Azerbaijan, Moldavia, the Ukraine, last but not least, in Hungary. “Ric” Grenell, like his friend “Finkie”, was in the thick of it, everywhere.
Grenell worked for the corrupt Moldavian politician Vladimir Plahotniuc before he was banned from entering the US. The woman who signed Grenell’s pay-cheques in America on behalf of the Hungarian Government, Jo Anne Barnhart, was another Finkelstein Associate. She was the Operations Manager of the campaign team that brought the corrupt Ilham Aliyev to power in Azerbaijan. Barnhart’s boss, Arthur J. Finkelstein and his sidekick, George E. Birnbaum (former cabinet secretary to Bibi Netanyahu) were the kingmakers in Hungary. Manafort busied himself in the Ukraine and on behalf of the Russian oligarchs surrounding Putin. He and Roger Stone and Grenell were known everywhere as “Arthur’s Boys”. Official tax filings obtained in the US by Hungary’s leading investigative journal, Átlátszó, revealed that the leaders of Hungary’s top lobby group in the US are all former colleagues and business partners of Arthur J. Finkelstein, the late Republican political strategist, who worked for the Hungarian governing party Fidesz until his death in 2017. These official tax filings show that Grenell’s paymasters are spending approx. 2 million USD per year to mislead the citizens of the USA. (See here.)
According to a Washington Post article published earlier this year, even though Grenell’s public relations firm was paid to do work for a U.S. non-profit funded almost entirely by the Hungarian government, “there is no indication that the Justice Department is looking into Grenell’s activities.” I too called for an investigation by journalists and justice department officials into the activities of Orbán’s lobbyists in the US back in 2017. That call was largely ignored because of a full court press by the same “fact checkers” who are allowing free passage for Grenell from Las Vegas. (To read my 3 part series on these pages back in April, 2017, See Part I. Part 2 is available here and Part 3 here.
For my upcoming analysis of the prospects for democracy in America under a Biden Presidency, stay tuned to these pages.
András Göllner