The US State Department has made its first comment on Georgia under the new administration of US President Donald Trump, maintaining the previous administration’s critical tone towards the Georgian government.

On Wednesday, <a href="http://www.globalnews.ge" rel="nofollow">www.globalnews.ge</a> published the US State Department’s written response ‘regarding the United States’ position on the current situation in Georgia’.

‘We continue to evaluate our approach to Georgia to advance American interests’, the response read.

‘The United States has made clear the steps Georgia’s government can take to demonstrate it is serious about improving its relationship with the United States.   Regarding continuing anti-democratic actions taken by the Georgian Dream government — as Vice President [JD] Vance said in Munich, you cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society’.

‘The United States has been a partner to Georgia and the Georgian people for 33 years, and a strong supporter of Georgia’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity throughout that time’.

The US State Department’s comments were made after a <a href="http://www.globalnews.ge" rel="nofollow">www.globalnews.ge</a> journalist questioned US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce about US–Georgia relations during a recent press briefing.

‘Have you had any communication with the ruling party in Georgia? If so, could you share what type of communication exists between you? The situation in Georgia is very difficult, the Georgian people and the international community do not recognise the election results. Peaceful protesters have been arrested as well as an independent journalist [media manager Mzia Amaghlobeli] who is currently in jail. Given these circumstances, what is your perspective on the situation in Georgia?’, the journalist asked.

While the statement has not appeared in any official statement from the State Department or on its website, IPN reported that the US Embassy in Georgia had confirmed its authenticity.

Since Trump’s election, there has been considerable speculation on what position his administration will take regarding Georgia and its current political crisis.

The crisis originated after the October 2024 parliamentary elections gave the ruling Georgian Dream party a large majority, with 54% of the vote.

It then deepened when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced in late November that the government was halting Georgia’s EU bid until 2028, sparking daily mass protests during which more than 400 demonstrators have been reported to have been detained thus far.

At the time, then-US State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller stated that the US had suspended its strategic partnership with Georgia.

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

Georgian Dream officials were quick to criticise the decision.

Following the election, Georgian Dream officials changed tactics, making a concerted effort to court the Trump administration while often appearing to copy Trump’s rhetoric when describing domestic issues

The diplomatic freeze that began under former US President Joe Biden ended in March 2025, when the US Ambassador to Georgia Robin Dunigan met with Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili.

The Georgian government’s cautious rhetoric

Following the October 2024 parliamentary elections — where it secured a fourth consecutive victory, despite the results not being recognised by the local opposition and civil society — Georgian Dream repeatedly stated that it looked forward to resetting relations with the US.

The rhetoric of Georgian Dream, its satellites, and mouthpieces was built on the premise that the new US administration would begin a fight against the ‘deep state’ and the ‘global war party’ , while simultaneously improving relations between Georgia and the US.

Georgian Dream officials have routinely referenced the threat of the global war party and deep state, two nebulous terms for shadowy forces the ruling party claims have been trying to pull Georgia into war and overthrow the government.

But recently their rhetoric has changed.

Since late December, senior Georgian Dream officials have begun making cautious statements that not everything was as clear-cut regarding future Georgia–US relations.

Parliamentary majority leader Mamuka Mdinaradze claimed in December that Georgia should not place ‘too much hope’ on Trump’s second term.

‘We should neither be hopeless nor place undue hope in the period after 20 January [Trump’s inauguration day]’, he said.

Mdinaradze claimed ‘Trump’s two main promises’ suited Georgia, including his promises regarding ‘ending the war [in Ukraine]’ and ‘defeating the deep state’.

‘The positioning of our country will depend on the events after 20 January, to what extent Donald Trump will be able to fulfill his promises’, Mdinaradze said.

On Wednesday, Luka Ekhvaia, advisor to Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili on international relations, stated in a podcast by the Georgian Public Broadcaster that the rhetoric of Georgian Dream representatives shows that the party is willing to continue the US’s critical policy towards them.

On Thursday, Georgian Dream’s mouthpiece Zaza Shatirishvili wrote in a letter published by local pro-government media that Georgian Dream team is changing its rhetoric regarding the US. Previously, party members and their satellites said that Trump would defeat the deep state, but now they also consider the US president to be its tool.

‘The US is still the main instrument of the global war party. Accordingly, its collapse also means the collapse of the global war party. Against the background of serious problems facing the American economy and the dollar, the deep state desperately needs to strengthen the image of America. However, naturally, even under the conditions of rebranding, the wolf will not stop howling and the deep state will not stop implementing its militaristic and revolutionary plans’, he wrote.

‘In fact, Trump is just as forced to submit to the global war party and the “deep state” as Biden’.

Speaking to the media on Thursday, Georgian Dream General Secretary and Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze said that ‘we started talking about the deep state a little earlier, three years ago. Back then, no one dared to do so, and I must say, I expected that when the Trump administration came, it would thank the Georgian government for all this’.

‘Today, the situation is that Trump is fighting the deep state, and this is not something we invented. When we talked about it, we were laughed at, but when Trump became president, the whole world learned that there is a “deep state” — a shadowy force that rules the world’.

‘Today we are in a waiting mode, there is a certain vacuum’, he said.

‘Let’s wait, we support the new US administration in defeating the deep state and if this really happens, of course, the consequences will also affect Georgia’.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The recent firings of career Justice Department lawyers by the White House is a sign of President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the law enforcement agency known for its long tradition of political independence.

On Friday, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles was fired without explanation in an terse email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office shortly after a right-wing activist posted about him on social media, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were concerned about potential retribution.

That followed the White House’s firing last week of a longtime career prosecutor who had been serving as acting U.S. attorney in Memphis, Tennessee.

The terminations marked an escalation of norm-shattering moves that have embroiled the Justice Department in turmoil and have raised alarm over a disregard for civil service protections for career lawyers and the erosion of the agency’s independence from the White House. That one of them was fired on the same day a conservative internet personality called for his removal adds to questions about how outside influences may be helping to shape government personnel decisions.

“The integrity of our legal system and the independence of DOJ requires that laws are enforced impartially, which cannot happen when the White House fires career prosecutors to advance a political agenda,” said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer and founder of Justice Connection, a network of department alumni that works to support employees.

The Trump loyalists installed to lead the Justice Department have fired employees who worked on the prosecutions against the president and demoted a slew of career supervisors in an effort to purge the agency of officials seen as insufficiently loyal. The latest firings of the U.S. attorney’s office employees, however, were carried out not by Justice Department leadership, but by the White House itself.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment Monday. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the White House “in coordination with” the Justice Department has dismissed more than 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies in recent weeks.

“The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest arbiters of the law who want to protect democracy, not subvert it,” Leavitt said. The Justice Department is an executive branch agency.

Justice Department political appointees typically turn over with a new administration, but rank-and-file career prosecutors remain with the department across presidential administrations and have civil service protections designed to shield them from termination for political reasons. The breadth of terminations this year far outpaces the turnover typically seen inside the Justice Department.

Adam Schleifer, who was part of the corporate & securities fraud strike force at the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, received an email Friday morning saying he was being terminated “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” according to the person familiar with the matter. The email came exactly an hour after right-wing activist Laura Loomer called for him to be fired in a social media post that highlighted Schleifer’s past critical comments about Trump while Schleifer was running in a Democratic primary for a congressional seat in New York.

Loomer described Schleifer as a “Trump hater” and Biden administration “holdover.” Schleifer, however, re-joined the U.S. attorney’s office in California at the end of the first Trump administration after losing the primary to Mondaire Jones. At the time of his firing on Friday, Schleifer was prosecuting a fraud case against Andrew Wiederhorn, the former CEO of Fat Brands Inc., who donated during the presidential campaign to groups supporting Trump.

The email to Schleifer came from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, which recruits, screens and manages political appointees and has no role in the hiring or firing of career civil servants.

Meanwhile, Reagan Fondren, a longtime career prosecutor in Tennessee, was fired Thursday in a one-line email from the White House, she told The Daily Memphian. Fondren became acting U.S. attorney in the Western District of Tennessee in September after the Biden appointee stepped down. Fondren did not respond to a request for comment.

While it was expected that her position as acting U.S. attorney would be temporary, acting U.S. attorneys usually return to their old jobs when a new politically appointed leader has been chosen. She was not just removed as acting leader of the office but fired from the Justice Department entirely, the newspaper reported.

Shortly after the Trump administration took over in January, the Justice Department fired more than a dozen employees who worked on the criminal cases against Trump, which the department abandoned in light of his electoral victory. Days later, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the firings of a group of prosecutors who were involved in the cases against the more than 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

Leavitt is one of three administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-amendment grounds. The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

The Justice Department today announced the leadership team and membership of Joint Task Force October 7 (JTF 10-7), an initiative that will seek justice for the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel and address the ongoing threat posed by Hamas and its affiliates.

“The barbaric Hamas terrorists will not win—and there will be consequences,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “As Attorney General, I have had the solemn honor of meeting with several families of U.S. citizens whose loved ones were kidnapped by Hamas on that dark day. This task force will strengthen the Department’s resolve to achieve justice for these families and their loved ones as we continue to fight antisemitism in all its forms.”

The Attorney General established JTF 10-7 on her first day in office, demonstrating the high priority the Justice Department is placing on honoring the memories of the approximately 1,200 people murdered by Hamas in the attack, including 47 U.S. citizens, and supporting the approximately 250 additional people that Hamas abducted, including 8 U.S. citizens.

JTF 10-7 will focus on targeting, charging, and securing for prosecution in the United States the direct perpetrators of the October 7 attack — the terrorists on the ground that day who murdered and kidnapped innocent civilians. JTF 10-7 will also assume responsibility for the pending charges against Hamas leadership relating to the October 7 attack and other acts of terrorism, and to bring those criminals to the United States to face justice for their reprehensible role in these atrocities. Finally, JTF 10-7 will investigate acts of terrorism and civil rights violations by individuals and entities providing support and financing to Hamas, related Iran proxies, and their affiliates, as well as acts of antisemitism by these groups.

“The victims of Hamas’s decades-long violent campaign of terrorism against Israel will always have the support of the U.S. government, and the Department will no longer permit illegal support of Hamas on our campuses and elsewhere in the homeland,” said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Antisemitic acts of terrorism – whether here or abroad – will never go unpunished. This task force represents our unyielding commitment to those who have suffered at the hands of these brutal terrorists.”

“The FBI is committed to establishing the Joint Task Force October 7 to continue the FBI’s investigative and victim assistance efforts related to the horrific acts of terror committed by Hamas,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “Working with our federal and international partners, this task force is a collaborative initiative between agencies, and together we will work to accomplish our vital counterterrorism mission.”

JTF 10-7 will be led by a senior counterterrorism prosecutor from the Justice Department’s National Security Division (NSD), a senior FBI Special Agent as the Task Force Commander, and an FBI Intelligence Analyst as Deputy Task Force Commander, all under the supervision of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. JTF 10-7 will also include trial attorneys from NSD, the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, Assistant U.S. Attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, and other detailees, with additional dedicated support from the Department’s Office of International Affairs.

JTF 10-7 will be supported by dedicated FBI agents, analysts, forensic accountants, data scientists, and linguists who are mostly co-located in Virginia. These professionals will contribute to JTF 10‑7’s expertise in investigating and prosecuting domestic and extraterritorial terrorism cases, including terrorism-financing matters, and serve as points of contact with the FBI’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell and Victim Services Division.

The FBI will coordinate with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies on JTF 10-7 activities, as well as foreign counterparts through the FBI’s Legal Attaché office in Israel. FBI agents will be embedded with Israel’s National Bureau of Counter Terror Finance, which has already been a tremendous partner in the ongoing investigations.

These efforts will build on the Justice Department’s ongoing investigations into the perpetrators of these heinous acts and demonstrate the Department’s commitment to degrading and dismantling Hamas, holding Hamas supporters accountable, achieving justice for victims, and fighting terrorist-led antisemitism.

The forecasting about Russia’s misinformation campaign aimed at diverting attention to another ‘unsuitable’ target in matters of supplying weapons to Hamas militants for attacking Israel was confirmed. 

On October 7, RLI warned that by using its warm relations with Hezbollah, Russia would send to the Gaza Strip a few units of weaponry captured on Ukraine’s battlefields – as evidence to back their claims. 

The next day, October 8, Russian affiliated military intelligence-Telegram channels were actively spreading a fake story claiming that Israeli soldiers near Ashkelon had found a pickup truck with a Soviet-made RPG-7 anti-tank grenade. The weapon allegedly had markings of a ‘Ukrainian unit from Mukachevo, Zakarpattia region’.

As we know, this weapon belongs to the 128th mountain infantry brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. While studying the materials, we came to the conclusion that this is the part of the weapons (including Soviet RPG-7 and AGS-17 automatic grenade launchers) the mentioned unit lost in December 2022 near the village of Pidgorodne, one mile in the north- east of Bakhmut town. They left the weapon while withdrawing from its positions, which came under the control of the Wagner PMC militants.

In this way Ukrainian Soviet-type weapons were transported by the Wagner Group to Russian territory, then the ammunition was sent by Russian Aerospace Forces to the Khmeimim airbase, Syria, and further to the training bases of Hezbollah and Hamas fighters in the vicinity of Damascus. However, we found evidence of Hamas militants being armed with Russian export AK-103-2 assault rifles.

In 2019, we tracked illegal AK-103 rifles sales on the Iraqi market after the Assad regime government supplying the guns.

The AK-103 entered service in Russia in 1993, precluding its placement in Soviet-era warehouses. Thus, these facts confirm the Kremlin’s involvement in the preparation and organization of the Hamas operation against Israel. As far as we know the Wagner and Redut mercenaries trained Palestinians at the training bases in Syria. Since both Russian units are under the operational control of the Main Directorate of the General Staff (formerly the GRU), the transfer of captured weapons to the Middle East is part of Russians’ preparations of the special operations in the region and may indicate that the attack on Israel could have been planned in the spring-summer of 2023.

Moreover, we think that there is a high possibility that Russian PMCs could enter the arms market by supplying both captured and Russian Soviet-style weapons to paramilitary and terrorist groups in the Middle East and Africa.

Prior, we published a report on ties and supplies of Russian weapons to terrorist organizations in the Middle East; in particular, the weapons were used during attack an Israeli school bus. 

It is unlikely that the Israeli Merkava battle tanks were destroyed by Palestinian operators launching civilian drones equipped with a combat element drop system. Such an accuracy proves a high-skilled training and practice of the drone operators.According to our estimates, the UAV operators were trained by Iranian or Russian specialists who have got their skills during the war against Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Georgia’s fifth President Salome Zourabichvili provided evidence on ‘Russian disinformation’ during a Q&A hearing of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. In her testimony, Zourabichvili emphasised that Georgia was at risk of becoming a grey zone, and that more actions need to be taken by the West to counter Russian influence and propaganda abroad.

The evidence hearing, titled ‘Disinformation diplomacy: How malign actors are seeking to undermine democracy’, focused largely on the political situation in Georgia, and what role Russia is playing in the country’s political and social affairs.

In her testimony, given virtually over Zoom, Zourabichvili highlighted that currently in Georgia, ‘every day brings new repressive laws’, citing the restrictive media and civil society legislation passed in parliament that same day, noting that ‘practically everybody is in one way or another under the repressive laws’.

Zourabichvili compared Georgian Dream’s recent actions to those of Russia’s in terms of its own suppression of civil society, with the difference being that in Georgia, the process ‘is going extremely fast’.

‘We do not have a justice system anymore in Georgia’, Zourabichvili said, after stating that out of 400 people detained as part of the ongoing protests, 50 still remain in prison. She also gave testimony related to the disappearances of civil society activists who ‘reappear in some police station’ and the treatment of prisoners in custody, including most recently of opposition politician Elene Khoshtaria, who accused police of assaulting her before stripping her naked. In all cases, Zourabichvili again noted the similarities to the ‘Russian method’.

However, Zourabichvili emphasised that a characteristic of Georgia’s civil society throughout the decades has been its resilience, and that there still exists a ‘very vivid’ Georgian civil society that is resisting the government oppression.

She also highlighted that a key difference between Georgia and Belarus, which British MPs used as a comparison case in their questioning, was that Georgia had long been ‘completely dependent on and also sustained by’ the EU and US, who reformed all government institutions and have now left the government isolated. Another difference she noted was that she remained in Georgia, unlike the Belarusian opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

However, while resistance continues, Zourabichvili stressed that Georgia is currently at risk of becoming a grey zone, where those sanctioned by Russia can find the freedom to operate.

Citing Georgia’s offshore law, which allows taxes and duties to be exempted on offshore assets being brought into the country, Zourabichvili claimed that any potentially sanctioned oligarch could make use of this loophole by becoming a Georgian citizen. In addition, she noted that Georgian citizens are not considered to be under sanctions by Georgian banks if proof has not been sustained by the Georgian courts, again creating the possibility for anyone friendly to the Georgian government to bypass Western sanctions if they are granted Georgian citizenship by the new president, Mikheil Kavelashvili.

In a separate discussion, after one MP asked whether the West had done enough to counter pro-Russian narratives in the past, Zourabichvili responded: ‘I think we have received no support’.

In her testimony, Zourabichvili took the West, including the UK, to task, making it clear that Georgia has long been a testing spot for Russia, whether in terms of actual military action, such as the 2008 August War, or disinformation campaigns and election  interference. She claimed that what Russia learns from its experiences in Georgia, it then transfers into other conflicts, such as in Ukraine.

When asked about whether the UK should sanction the pro-government television station Imedi — often accused of being a Georgian Dream propaganda outlet, and which is owned and operated out of London — Zourabichvili told the MPs that ‘I think you know what you should do’, before going on to criticise the current sanctions policy.

According to her, while the current sanctions being enacted might please Georgia’s protesters, given their focus on punishment, they do not serve the ‘ultimate purpose’ of changing behaviour. Therefore, Zourabichvili pressed that sanctions should be linked in a ‘stick and carrot policy of conditionality’.

During her testimony, Zourabichvili also touched upon the 2024 parliamentary elections, which she claimed had been a ‘large, sophisticated, manipulation operation’ that was ‘inspired and supported by Russians and Russian methods’.

Towards the end of the session, the parliamentary committee was notified that the government had decided to put Russia on the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, meaning that ‘anyone working for the Russian state in the UK will need to declare what they are doing or risk jail’, a decision Zourabichvili welcomed.

‘I don’t know whether it will help us directly, but it is something very positive. The more people realise that something is happening, the sooner we will see a real strategy’, she said.