Democracy in Georgia Is Under Threat by the US Congress and the Helsinki Commission

Americans should practice what they preach when it comes to election interference.

[Photo Credit: By Jelger Groeneveld]

The following, by Simone Weil Center board member James Carden, first appeared in the Realist Review.

Tbilisi—It was Lincoln who once said “I would like to see someone proud of the place in which they live.” The 16th president never made it to the South Caucasus, but here reside a people quite justly proud of the place in which they live. Among the most striking differences between the vision offered to Georgian citizens by the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party and by the Western-backed opposition parties is that the former is unabashedly so.

From the perspective of an American of rather longstanding, it seems the politics of the GD are not dissimilar to those of MAGA Republicans; Hungary’s Fidesz; France’s National Rally; Poland’s Law and Justice; or the UK’s Reform Party. The pro-NATO, pro-EU Georgian opposition coalition, having lost a democratic election by a convincing margin last October, continues to call for foreign powers (the US, the EU) to sanction members and funders of the GD. The bedraggled youth who sit in protest on the steps of the Georgian Parliament under the flags of a foreign powers are calling for those powers to sanction the legitimate winners of their country’s last national election: Do they not know what “democracy” means?

For some reason, the Georgian opposition thinks Washington and Brussels (a EU and NATO “Information Center” resides in a handsome building just off Tbilisi’s Freedom Square) have something to teach Georgia about democracy. Still worse, the illusion that Washington has both the right and duty to teach Georgia how to govern itself persists in the American media and in the halls of Congress.

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The Helsinki Commission: A National Embarrassment

Last month Congress passed the MEGOBARI Act. Taking a page from Orwell (as Congress often inadvertently does) megobari is the Georgian word for 'friend'—it is also, in the manner of these sorts of bills, an acronym for “Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence.

In reality it is a sanctions bill that seeks to cripple the financing behind the GD.

The bill is the hare-brained-child of the Helsinki Commission, a relic of the Cold War that now employs odd-ball-starved-for-social-media-attention staffers LARPing as freedom fighters for Ukraine.

Before we get to the specific problems with the MEGOBARI act, a few words about the Commission are perhaps in order. To be perfectly blunt, Congress should disband the Helsinki Commission, it is a national embarrassment. And has been for years. It is an unaccountable office that for the past decade and a half has prostituted itself to William Browder, a billionaire hedge fund manager who renounced his American citizenship.

Browder, the grandson of the Stalinist dupe Earl Browder, was tried and convicted in absentia by a Russian court on credible charges of tax evasion. To avoid being hauled back to Russia by Interpol, Browder spent untold sums in Washington, London, and many places besides, on an admittedly brilliant PR strategy that transformed him from a tax cheat into a human rights crusader, and, eventually (and unbelievably) into a Knight of the British Empire. One would have to be deeply stupid to have fallen for the act. But many have. For readers understandably unfamiliar with what kind of character Browder actually is, here is a video of him jumping out the backseat of a car and running down 51st St. in Manhattan to avoid being served a subpoena.

“Sir” William worked hand in glove with the Helsinki Commission’s adviser (now its Chief of Staff—they ‘fail up’ on Capitol Hill, you know), Kyle Parker, who last year found himself under investigation for acting as a foreign agent for Ukraine. Parker, deeply compromised by, among other things, his marriage to a Ukrainian woman, began to act as a freelance weapons dealer to further, you know, the real cause.

Congress, being what it is, promoted him.

In any event, Parker, and his financial patron Browder, crafted a fictional account of the death of Browder’s hapless accountant Sergei Magnitsky (Browder claims that Magnitsky was his attorney—another lie). Parker was later given a “Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award” by Browder for his efforts. An aside: Browder’s name never appears in the numerous accounts of foreign influence in Washington: Why would that be?

As a piece of fiction, the Magnitsky saga would have been trashed by critics as so far removed from reality that it could not be believed. For example: In his book Red Notice, Browder claims he got a late night call,

…That night, at 12:15 a.m., the voice mail alert on my BlackBerry vibrated. Nobody ever called my BlackBerry. No one even knew the number. I looked at Elena and dialed into voice mail.…I heard a man in the midst of a savage beating. He was screaming and pleading. The recording lasted about two minutes and cut mid-wail.” He writes, As soon as the sun came up, I called everyone I knew. They were all okay. The only person I couldn’t call was Sergei.”

As the award winning investigative journalist Lucy Komisar, the only American journalist to have exposed the Browder fraud, notes,

…Imagine Magnitsky, handcuffed based on what Browder claims and the bruises found on his wrists, being beaten by, Browder says, eight riot guards.

Magnitsky: “Hey guys, I have to make a phone call. Can we take a break?”

Even Magnitsky’s mother doesn't believe the story Browder peddled. But then again, she's clearly brighter than the staff of the Helsinki Commission which took Browder’s claims at face value (no investigation was ever done to validate any part of Browder’s tale) and duly drew up the 2012 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, a sanctions bill against Russia and one that effectively stuck a dagger into the heart of President Obama’s “reset” policy and put the US squarely on track for a new and even more perilous Cold War.

But that was the goal all along. Browder’s tale, sold to a credulous media, was weaponized by the Helsinki Commission in the service of a policy favored by neoconservatives in Congress—a policy that, allow me to add, subverted the foreign policy of a duly elected President of the United States.

Democracy in action.

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Old Habits Die Hard

The Helsinki Commission is at it again—this time it has Russia’s southern neighbor, Georgia in its sights. And naturally Russia is both the pretext and the ultimate target. Helsinki Commission chairman Joe Wilson (R-SC) and ranking member Steve Cohen (D-TN) praised the passage of their bipartisan effort to overturn the Georgian election. Cohen, a loud and unscrupulous peddler of the Russiagate conspiracy, said the act “sends a strong message to the Georgian people that the U.S. supports them as they fight for their democracy.”

In fact it does the opposite.

In reality, the act demands that Georgians relinquish their right to vote for whom they want to vote. Indeed, the MEGOBARI act is based on the faulty premise that the GD is riddled with Russian influence—in the manner it was alleged that Ukraine’s ill-fated Party of Regions was said to have been a proxy for Russian interests in that country. I suspect that all the GD wants are simply non-hostile relations with their restive northern neighbor. But that, in the eyes of the zealots on the Helsinki Commission, is a grave sin not to be countenanced.

The passage of the MEGOBARI act (which President Trump should veto if it ever makes it to his desk) only serves to alienate a small, friendly, Christian country in a very tough neighborhood. Bounded by Russia to the north, Islamist Turkey to the West, and another Islamist dictatorship to the East in Azerbaijan—Georgia would be far better off charting its own path—free of dictates emanating out of Washington or Moscow or, for that matter, Beijing.

Election interference is something we Americans deplore. We should practice what we preach.