The last time I wrote about high-powered Canadian–American lawyer Bob Amsterdam in a 2024 article for the Kyiv Independent, he texted me the day after to call me a ‘hack’ and say my work was ‘absolutely shameful’.
At the time, I was writing about how Amsterdam was working to spread propaganda to Western audiences about the so-called ‘persecution of Christians’ in Ukraine. Although Amsterdam reiterated that he fully supported Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression, there he was, telling far-right conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson (also an apologist for Russia) how Ukraine had become a dictatorship.
It is not just that I believed his claims were unsubstantiated by evidence and served as red meat for those in the US who wanted to end aid to Ukraine; I also found Amsterdam’s insertion of his own hyperbolic sense of outrage to be less than believable.
And now, I have found myself again writing about Amsterdam, but this time in connection with the upcoming parliamentary elections in Armenia, widely seen as a pivotal moment for the country as it seeks increasing alignment with the West. Amsterdam, who showed up on the scene to defend Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan, has both characterised himself as a selfless warrior for religious freedom and said the election as a whole is about the same thing, as Karapetyan is a friend to the Armenian Apostolic Church, long at odds with Pashinyan.
I don’t want to get into the validity of the charges against Karapetyan, or, for that matter, the accusations that Pashinyan is unjustly cracking down on the Armenian Apostolic Church (which Amsterdam frequently alleges), because ultimately I don’t think it is relevant to this story.
What is really going on here is that Amsterdam, through the guise of being hired as a personal lawyer for Karapetyan, has become an effective campaign spokesperson to unseat Pashinyan. Unsurprisingly sidestepping the fact that he is being paid to do this, Amsterdam has cast this whole affair as a moral issue. He has also leveraged his PR skills and connections with key circles in Washington (Tucker Carlson rears his head yet again) in an attempt to reframe the election as being part of an entirely fictitious ‘war on Christianity’.
If it isn’t clear already that I find all of this to be reprehensible, there is even more.
While portraying himself as someone profoundly disgusted by the notion of denying the Armenian Genocide, Amsterdam has suggested Pashinyan is enabling such deniers, using his accusation as yet another campaign attack. Nevermind that Amsterdam himself had been directly employed by the Turkish government, which explicitly denies the genocide happened and seeks to silence those who want to acknowledge it.
But worse than all the sanctimony and hypocrisy is Amsterdam playing with fire in his campaigning for Karapetyan.
On what is effectively a campaign website his law firm created for Karapetyan, there is the following statement: ‘87.5% of Armenians agree that “the loss of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh] is temporary, we must strengthen our army and bring back what was lost”. The Church gives voice to this majority view — which is precisely why Pashinyan must silence it’.
The poll Amsterdam was referring to has been widely criticised, and moreover does not mention other survey data that indicates an exceedingly small number of Armenians think Nagorno-Karabakh can or should be taken by force.
Azerbaijan has repeatedly suggested such revanchist rhetoric could upend the peace process and lead to a new war, something that Pashinyan himself has also said.
These kinds of statements go further than even what Armenian opposition figures themselves have said. It is beyond irresponsible for Amsterdam to so carelessly suggest Armenia could start a war it would likely lose, and even more deplorable to do so for the purposes of a political campaign.
But of course, I don’t think Amsterdam cares about any of this, as long as he gets his paycheck.
Unsurprisingly, Amsterdam declined to tell us how much that paycheck is, nor would he rule out further work in Armenia. Safe to say, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him in the region.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include subsequent comments from Amsterdam about his alleged affiliation with Epstein.
If they had managed to do even the smallest due diligence, they'd have seen that, and they'd have realized that we never even offered our services to Mr. Epstein. Mr. Epstein, in the one meeting I had about an African client, did raise the possibility of me working for him, and I declined.
‘If they had managed to do even the smallest due diligence, they’d have seen that, and they’d have realised that we never even offered our services to Mr. Epstein. Mr. Epstein, in the one meeting I had about an African client, did raise the possibility of me working for him, and I declined’, Amsterdam told News.am.
