Democratic Party Chairman and former Prime Minister of Albania Sali Berisha responded to the declarations made one day earlier by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Gabriel Escobar. While considering the decision to declare him non-grata as totally based on slander, Berisha responded to Escobar's call to the Albanian institutions to investigate the accusations against him.

“Since Mr. Escobar repeatedly calls on the Albanian institutions created by the Sorosian reform to investigate the accusations against me, I call on him to at least respect the demands from the United States Congress for transparency about this decision based totally on slander!”, wrote Berisha.

“Mr. Escobar says that the decision (of State Secretary Blinken) was not political, but in fact, not only the lack of facts and transparency, but above all, the instrumentalisation of this decision is the strongest proof of the substance, the purpose, and even of the political actors who stand behind it. This is clearly seen in the grotesque statements of your Ambassador, who threatened the Democrats that supported Berisha that they would eat grass”!

“(It is seen) in the brutal, absurd and flagrant violation of our country's sovereignty (by insisting) that Sali Berisha should not enter the parliament! (It is seen) in the interventions that go against the Vienna Convention in the internal developments in the Democratic Party; in the open appeals to the electorate for whom they should vote; and in the pressure on the courts to make the majority a minority, all of this in violation of Albania's sovereignty, laws of the country, and international conventions”.

Berisha wrote that that despite the direct interventions of Premier Edi Rama and US Ambassador Yuri Kim in the court decisions against the Democratic Party, the support for Sali Berisha and the now re-founded Democratic Party based on its conservative values ​​is greater than it ever was in the last nine years. Berisha also responded to Gabriel Escobar's call to supporters of the Democratic Party.

“Finally, I want to clarify the opinion that those who support Sali Berisha are men and women who overthrew the dictatorship that offered grass instead of votes; they are young men and women who do not want to leave Albania. They do not accept lies as truth, slander as reality, nor delegate their conscience. They have boundless gratitude to the United States for its historical role in the sovereignty of Albania and Kosovo, but they are patriots and can never accept that anyone other than Albanian citizens decides their MPs. They have been and are pro-Americans who believe in the high values ​​of freedom and democracy that they share with the American nation”.

Berisha repeated that his designation without proof, fact or documents was a result of the corrupt mafia lobbying of Edi Rama and his mentor George Soros as a blind political revenge after Berisha request in 2017 to declare Soros persona non grata in Albania, as well as due to the opposition to the project of division and land swap between Kosovo and Serbia. Berisha lists among the causes of this decision the opposition to the Open Balkans initiative as a Serbian-Russian project, as well as the justice reform, which today has transformed the Albanian justice system into a branch of the government.