Ric Grenell and Sara Carter

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome former Acting Director of National Intelligence, Rick Grinnell, and award-winning journalist, Sarah Carter. Aren't I lucky? Look who I... The best acting DNI and former ambassador to Germany, Rick Grinnell. Thank you. I love you too. You know, we have been here now at CPAC listening to a lot of discussion just right now with Gordon Chang on foreign policy. China has come up numerous times, we've heard about Russia, but there is a part of the world right now that Ambassador Grinnell is very familiar with, that is facing a very difficult time, and one that is really quite frightening for all of us, if we don't pay attention to it now. And that's the Balkans. And I don't think people, right, I don't think people are hearing enough about this. Let's just start there. Let's start with Kosovo. Let's start what's happening in the Balkans with Serbia. And over the weekend, there's been a bit of an uprising, in a sense, that things are going to get far worse in that region of the world. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on, Rick? Oh, where to begin? First of all, I think we have to be very upfront and say that there is no U.S. leadership in the Balkans right now. And as we all know, when there is no U.S. leadership, situations suffer. I worked at the U.N. for eight years, and I can tell you, when there's no U.S. leadership at the U.N., every situation suffers, peacekeeping operations suffer. And so what we're seeing right now in this conflict between Kosovo and Serbia, you know, I've seen some people who know nothing about the situation say, oh, this is Russia. Maybe we really can't talk about Russia. This is not about Russia. This is literally about the leader of Kosovo deciding that he is going to unilaterally make some decisions which is causing conflict. This is 100% the fault of Elbenkurti, who is the leader of Kosovo. And let me be very clear about this. Kosovo is a great ally of the United States. We have done much for the people of Kosovo, and I love the people of Kosovo, but they are not being served by this leader right now. And I will get a lot of hate for calling out Elbenkurti, but the reality is we had a deal. And what this whole conflict is about right now is license plates. License plates and identification cards in Kosovo, which now the Serbians are very upset about right now. Look, let me go a little bit, you know, deep and boring here for a second. But in 2011, we worked out a deal. There was a deal that the EU put, and they said if Serbian cars go into Kosovo, you put a little sticker on the car. If Kosovo cars go into Serbia, you put a little sticker. Everything was fine. That was a five-year deal. In 2016, they redid that deal, right? There was an idea. Actually, the stickers came in 2016, but in 2011, they had a deal where they recognized each other's license plates. And now what we have is Elbenkurti jumping out and saying, I no longer will recognize any license plates that come from Serbia into Kosovo. This is the same conflict we saw a couple of months ago. And a couple of months ago, it was again Elbenkurti's fault, because what happened is he decided to say if you bring prescription drugs from Serbia into Kosovo from a Serbian doctor, written from a Serbian doctor, he will no longer recognize the Serbian doctor's orders. And so therefore, he classifies this as contraband. Look, this is getting really into the details, but we worked out a solution in the Trump administration. And I think it's important, yes. And I think it's important that we explain to the audience and to the American people why this is important, because what we saw in the past in that region of the world was horrific, right? And I mean, those feelings have not dissipated. No, and they should dissipate, to be honest. I know it was horrible, and it was more than 20 years ago. But it was my job in working through these solutions is to tell people, look, it's up to you. You can fight the wars of the past, and your kids are not going to have jobs, and they're all going to leave and go to Hungary and Poland and other places. But if you'd like to look to the future and solve some of these issues and do economic development, we've got to give President Trump credit here, because what President Trump said is, you've got the Europeans and all these people that have been concentrating on political issues for 20-plus years, and let's go in and do economic development. We did four economic development agreements. The people of the Balkans, the governments in the Balkans were very excited. Now what we have is they're fighting over license plates and who can drive across the border. And the reality is that if the Biden administration would step up and stop letting the Europeans try to come up with a solution, the European solution is we're going to have a meeting in Brussels on the 18th of August. Oh, really? So there's no solution that they've put forward. We're just going to meet in Brussels and try to work out a solution. This is a disaster. We've seen for 20 years the Europeans cannot do what's right in the Balkans by pushing the parties. And that's what you've got to do. You've got to push both sides. Well, we saw you do that quite often with Angela Merkel as well, and that was very interesting. But right now, do you think the Biden administration is doing enough in this part of the world? I've got a two-part question here for you. There is no envoy from the United States to the Balkans, and could the US, and this is why I think this is so important, could this potentially, I guess, dissolve into a problem that the United States would have to get actively involved in again? Look, if you're from Iowa, your National Guard are stationed in Kosovo. We have Iowa National Guard that does a NATO force. So yeah, this is going to affect Americans. If all of a sudden it delves into war, which I don't believe it will, and I believe there's a solution, and we just need leadership from the White House, we need to stop having the White House say, we're going to let the Europeans, I mean, look, they put the Europeans in charge two years ago, and we're at a conflict again. I mean, stop doing this. And let me just say this too. For anyone who cares about this group, think about the name Hashim Thaci. President and former President and former Prime Minister Thaci is somebody that I negotiated with during the Trump administration. He represented Kosovo and President Putin from Turkey. These are two men who literally wanted to solve this issue and looked forward. When President Thaci was on his way to Washington, D.C. to come and negotiate the final agreement with him, he went to the airport, and the Europeans issued an indictment of him from 20 years ago. The man sits in a Hague prison today, two years later. His crime is that he was negotiating with Donald Trump. This is so outrageous, and if the Europeans cannot understand their vindictive legal system, which is going after President Thaci, sitting in prison for trying to negotiate, they came up with these charges that are from 20 years ago that they've been investigating that they've never been able to prove. We've seen that happen before. Crazy charges, okay? The Europeans are doing this. We have European media here today, and if they don't get off their duck and start looking at some of these issues on why President Thaci is in prison, honestly, they will never be able to take the mantle of pretending like they care about human rights. I'll finish with this. Chancellor Merkel told me, to my face, that she would allow visa liberalization for the people of Kosovo, the people in the Balkans. She promised me. She looked at her team, and she said, let's do it for certain sectors. It's never been done. The European media didn't hold her to account. They're still not holding anyone to account today. The Germans are standing in the way of this. The Germans are responsible for the prosecutions in The Hague, and you are paying for this crappy court. What should be done? What should be done with the court? The Biden administration, who, by the way, Joe Biden once called President Thaci the George Washington of Kosovo. Let me just say this to President Biden. If he's the George Washington of Kosovo, why aren't you helping him? Why aren't you getting him out of prison? Why is it your DOJ is allowing this guy to be in prison? It's unacceptable, and we have an ally in Kosovo and the people of Kosovo, and we should do this. But right now, their current leader is terrible. Albin Kurti is terrible. I want to just move on really quickly, because I know we don't have a lot of time left, and we'll probably get thrown off the stage, because I just have to ask him, and I know you probably are all wondering yourself. When I get there, you'll know what I mean. As the former acting director of national intelligence, you didn't- Do UFOs exist? No, I- Usually my number one question. He knew I was going to go there. You know I interview Lou Elizondo on my podcast quite often. I keep asking that same question. But this is on a more serious note. During the Trump administration, you had a chance to have a front row at what was happening to President Trump and what was happening internally with the bureaucracy. We watched James Flapper, the former DNI. We watched John Brennan, the former head of the CIA. James Comey. James Comey of the FBI. You can see how the American people feel about that. Take advantage and weaponize the system against the duly elected president of the United States of America. These were people that we entrusted with our own security. What can you say about that as a former DNI, former acting director, and how dangerous is this situation moving into the future if the bureaucracy is not cleaned out? I know we're over our time, so I'll make this quick. Look, it made me very sad to look at the intelligence and to see that we knew that this was a felony. The Russian charges were felonies. And yet you had people in Congress like Adam Schiff who manipulated the intelligence. Who literally would manipulate what he knew. They'll trust me and lie to the American people. And I saw this and it made me sad that we allowed this to happen. I tried to tell all of the intelligence agency leaders constantly, you have a problem with the American people. They don't trust you. And this is going to affect you because if they don't trust you, they're going to tell the representatives not to give you more money. And you're going to have to cut jobs because we don't trust people who don't come clean. I will say this about the FBI. FBI officials mid-level, they know there's a problem. They want to solve it. They are good people. It's the leadership of the FBI, the leadership at DOJ. And I believe that when Donald Trump comes back, because I do believe he will be president again, and when Donald Trump comes back, we must clean out the FBI and DOJ of all those people who are partisan. All those people who are partisan. And it's totally doable. It must be done. And it irks me to no end to hear people like Merrick Garland pretend like they're the ones not being political. They are being so political that they need to be held to account and kicked out. And when we return, we should do it immediately. And that's a promise right now. That's a promise. You're here. If I was in charge, I would do it. OK. I have a feeling you're going to be in charge of something. Thank you. Ambassador Rick Grinnell. Thank you.