US Embassy calls accusations by Georgian Dream leader ‘categorically false’

(Updated: about 2 hours ago)• 3 min read

▲Mamuka Mdinaradze. Photo: Georgian Dream.

The US Embassy has responded to statements made by Mamuka Mdinaradze, Georgian Dream’s parliamentary leader, about the embassy’s alleged involvement in the ongoing protests in Georgia, calling the accusations ‘categorically false’.

In response to a reporter’s question at the party’s headquarters on Monday, Mdinaradze claimed that the statements from the administration of US President Donald Trump differ from the actions of the US Embassy in Georgia.

‘What is happening on the streets, if someone believes that it is happening independently of the US Embassy, they know nothing about what is happening on the streets’, Mdinaradze said, referring to the ongoing protests in Georgia against the government’s EU U-turn.

‘If there is one person in this country [...] who thinks that the street protests, the PR campaigns, the harm that is being done by the opposition agents, are happening absolutely independently and with distance from the owners of this agency or the US Embassy in Georgia, [...] they have no idea what is happening in Georgia today’.

Mdinaradze stated that ‘it is a pity that the statements and narratives of the newly elected US government are one and the actions of its lower echelons, including the US Embassy in Georgia, are completely out of step with the statements we hear’.

‘Hopefully, this will be corrected very soon’, he said at the briefing.

Mdinaradze reiterated the ruling Georgian Dream’s narrative and conspiracy theories about the ‘Deep State’, claiming that the US ‘bureaucracy is not small’ and that ‘defeating its influence’ will not be easy.

The term ‘Deep State’, which is frequently used to describe groups made up of different organisations or agencies that secretly manipulate governments, settled in the Georgian Dream’s dictionary relatively recently. In December last year, the ruling party specifically blamed the ‘Deep State’ for the unrest and wars that have occurred worldwide in the past few years.

He also claimed that the US Embassy in Georgia ‘patronised in the sense of organising yesterday’s rally’, referring to Sunday’s protest where thousands of demonstrators tried to block one of Tbilisi’s main highways into the city. Police attempted to violently disperse the demonstration by physically and verbally assaulting the protesters.

‘This is our assessment and our information, not just an assessment. Hopefully, this approach, the arbitrariness of the lower echelons, the service of the “Deep State” and not the American people, will soon end’, he said.

On the same day, the US Embassy in Georgia responded to Minaradze’s accusations, calling them ‘categorically false’.

‘Mr. Mdinaradze’s statements today are categorically false and demonstrate a lack of understanding of what the United States Embassy does to support [the US] President [Donald] Trump and Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio’s top priorities of making America safer, stronger and more prosperous’, the statement read.

On 27 December, the US sanctioned the billionaire founder of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, for ‘undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation’.

Georgians throughout the country have been protesting for almost 70 days against the government’s policies and the announcement the ruling party would halt the country’s EU accession process. The political crisis followed October’s parliamentary elections, which according to official results, gave the ruling Georgian Dream party a large majority, with 54% of the vote.