Buzhala and Behrami Mocked Questions Over Allegations Linking Grenell to a Sex Scandal Involving a Minor
When allegations of a sex scandal involving a minor surfaced, Grenell stayed silent while Buzhala and Behrami mocked the questions instead of demanding accountability.
I am supposed to wait for the deadline.
That is the proper ritual. You send questions. You give time. You keep the door open for a denial, a correction, a clarification, even a furious rebuttal. You do it because you are not a prosecutor, and because journalism, at its least sentimental, is still a system built on offering people the chance to speak for themselves.
But I reserve the right to let this article see daylight now, because both Berat Buzhala and Artan Behrami have already made their position plain. Not with answers. With performance. With the smirk of the screenshot, the curated crop, the public heckle, the little comedy routine where the journalist becomes the joke and the questions become the punchline. It is an old trick, and it is always the same kind of cowardice. When you do not want to address the substance, you try to make the act of asking look ridiculous.
The substance here is not a petty dispute. It is not a spat over tone. It is not an argument about personal style. We are talking about an alleged sex scandal involving a minor1. We are talking about a political operator whose last decade has raised questions that touch US national security and, by extension, our own. We are talking about a region where influence is rented, narratives are bought, and the people who shout loudest about patriotism often mean their own survival.
Chronology matters, because this story is less about any single allegation than about the pattern of conduct that forms around it.
A year ago, Buzhala published a piece2 whose core message was not subtle. In his telling, American presidential politics becomes a practical question for Albanians, a numbers game in swing states, a crude arithmetic of influence. Then he makes the turn that matters. He says that if he had the vote, he would vote for Trump, but in truth he would be voting for Richard Grenell. Not for the office, not for policy, not for institutions, but for a man. He presents Grenell as the real prize, the hidden lever, the person whose return would supposedly deliver outcomes for Albanians.
He goes further. He writes that in the last meeting he had with Grenell in Tirana, in the presence of two or three other people, Grenell pledged that his first job on returning to an administration would be the release of Hashim Thaçi and other detainees. There is a reason this line lands like a stone. A pledge to intervene in an international judicial process3 is not a casual boast. It is either an empty fantasy designed to impress a useful audience, or it is a declaration of intent to pressure, undermine, or bypass a court. Either way, it is not the language of rule of law. It is the language of a fixer.
Then comes the present week, and the publication of our own reporting and commentary, which placed into one frame a series of claims, public statements, and a silence that has begun to look like strategy. We described allegations attributed to Patrick Byrne, we described how sources contacted our newsroom, we described what we did and did not have, and we described the fact that we sought a response from Grenell before publication and did not receive one. We did what journalists are meant to do when faced with explosive claims. We attributed. We separated what is alleged from what is known. We recorded the absence of proof. We recorded the absence of a denial. We asked direct questions in the open interest.
And then we did the next obvious thing. We went to the local distributors of Grenell in our political culture, the people who have treated him as a credential, a talisman, a shortcut to legitimacy. We asked them, plainly, what they meant, what they knew, what they saw, what they were doing when they chose to elevate him.
To Buzhala, we asked whether he confirms that he called on Albanians in the US to back Grenell politically. We asked whether the meeting in Tirana happened, when, and who was present. We asked whether Grenell made that pledge about Thaçi directly to him. We asked whether it is acceptable for a foreign political figure to promise interference in an international trial. We asked whether, in light of serious allegations now circulating publicly, he distances himself today. We asked whether he continued communicating with Grenell after that meeting, whether he is willing to clarify his stance publicly.
It is not an ambush. It is not gossip. It is a basic accountability interview, compressed into written form. The questions are sharp because the topic is sharp. The topic is sharp because the stakes are sharp.
He did not respond.
Instead, he turned our message into a prop. He posted a screenshot4. Not even the full set. A crop. A selection. A version designed to invite laughter rather than engage the question of why a public commentator would be cheerleading for a man on whom such allegations now hang, and why that commentator would treat the idea of a minor sex scandal as material for banter.
This is where the moral line appears, bright and unmissable. You can dispute reporting. You can challenge inferences. You can demand evidence. You can accuse a journalist of bias. These are all part of the messy theatre of public life. But when the subject is an alleged minor, and your instinct is to laugh at the questions instead of answer them, you are not defending principle. You are signalling impunity.
Behrami, meanwhile, is not a bystander. He has been one of the most reliable mechanics of reinvention in Kosovo politics, the kind of figure who understands that titles are costumes and that audiences are hungry for anything that looks like foreign endorsement. In my earlier piece5 I described how he referred publicly to Grenell as Ambassador6, a title Grenell does not currently hold, and how such wording is not a harmless courtesy but a deliberate inflation, a way to give borrowed authority to a man operating through informal channels.
When I sent Behrami questions, they were pointed for the same reason. I asked whether he admits he created a false perception by elevating Grenell with that title. He was asked about reported details and whether he knew them when he promoted Grenell, whether he condemns Grenell accepting honours from Serbia in the shadow of violence against Kosovo institutions, whether he has coordinated positions or actions, whether he has benefited politically, financially, or through media access from the relationship, whether he will correct his public claims.
And then, almost like a choreographed scene, Behrami appears under Buzhala’s post with his own cropped screenshot, joining the chorus of mockery. Two men, both accustomed to influence, both accustomed to driving narratives, both choosing to respond to accountability questions with public laughter.
They would rather crop questions than answer them.
That duet tells us something more important than any single answer could.
It tells us they recognise the vulnerability of their own position. A person who feels secure answers questions, even if the answer is rude. A person who knows he can justify himself does not need to crop. Cropping is for people who want to control the reader’s emotional reaction before the reader has time to think.
It also tells us they understand the power relationship between themselves and their audience. They are not speaking to our newsroom when they post the screenshot. They are speaking to the crowd. They are recruiting the crowd to do what they will not do openly, which is to punish the act of scrutiny. They want to teach everyone watching that asking questions earns you ridicule, and that ridicule is a form of social discipline. The goal is not to refute. The goal is to intimidate.
This is the part that ought to worry anyone who still pretends to care about democratic culture. Not because I have been mocked. Journalists are mocked all the time. It is practically an occupational hazard. The worry is that these men are mocking the idea that serious allegations require serious answers. They are mocking the expectation that political influence should be accountable. They are mocking the minimum ethical reflex that says, if a name you have promoted becomes attached to claims of this kind, you do not make jokes first. You check what you did, what you said, what you knew, and what you owe the public now.
There is also an uglier question hanging behind their laughter, and it is the one I asked, even if I asked it with journalistic restraint.
Why do they cling to Grenell so tightly.
Why, when his formal authority is gone, do they still treat him as a passport. Why, when allegations and investigative reports swirl around him, do they treat questions as comedy rather than as an alarm bell. Why, when the topic is a potential blackmail scenario, do they refuse the simplest act of political hygiene, which is to create distance until facts are clear.
The charitable explanation is that they are addicted to proximity. In our politics, proximity to perceived American power is a drug. It makes mediocre men feel historic. It gives them a shortcut around public consent. It lets them speak as if they are plugged into global decision making, as if they have access, as if they are not merely local operators selling a story.
The less charitable explanation is that proximity is not the point. Leverage is.
If the allegation structure is what Byrne suggested in public, the concept is familiar even to people who have never worked in intelligence. A person is compromised, not necessarily because the act is proven, but because the rumour is persistent, the materials are said to exist, the networks are said to circulate them, and the target becomes cautious, reactive, controlled. Even the possibility can shape behaviour. In that world, silence is not just silence. Silence is a vulnerability.
So here are the questions that sit where laughter should not sit.
If Grenell is, as alleged by others, vulnerable to kompromat, then who benefits from his interventions in the Balkans. Who benefits from pressure campaigns, from destabilising narratives, from the erosion of Kosovo’s institutions, from the delegitimising of courts, from the inflation of old titles into new authority.
And then the local question, the one that makes Buzhala’s crop and Behrami’s comment feel less like humour and more like panic.
What kompromat might be operating closer to home?
What does Grenell, or those alleged to hold influence over him, have on the men who promote him. What do Buzhala and Behrami fear would come out if they broke ranks. What makes them treat distance as impossible. Is it ideological loyalty. Is it financial dependency. Is it access to future favour. Is it the dread of being left out. Or is it something more personal, something they do not want to explain in public, something that makes a simple answer dangerous to them.
Fairness demands we do not pretend to know what we cannot prove. It is possible there is no kompromat on them at all. It is possible their attachment is merely opportunism dressed as analysis. It is possible their mockery is simply their preferred style, the cheap laugh as a substitute for argument.
But fairness also permits the obvious inference that their behaviour invites. People who are confident do not behave like this. People who feel cornered do. People who believe their own story do not need to perform this much contempt for questions. Contempt is what you use when you cannot afford to engage, because engagement risks opening a door you have been holding shut.
They will say you are obsessed. They will say you are theatrical. They will say you are chasing clicks, or grudges, or attention. They will tell their audiences that I am driven by personal curiosity, as Buzhala already implied. That line is meant to stain our motive so they do not have to answer our content.
But motive is not the issue.
The questions stand even if the questioner is disliked.
Did Buzhala tell Albanians in the US to vote as if voting for Grenell. Yes or no.
Did he meet Grenell in Tirana as he wrote. Yes or no.
Who was present. When was it.
Did Grenell pledge that his first act would be to secure releases from an international court. Yes or no.
Does Buzhala consider such a pledge acceptable. Yes or no.
In light of allegations now circulating publicly, does he distance himself. Yes or no.
And for Behrami.
Why did he present Grenell as Ambassador if he knew he was not.
Did he knowingly inflate a title to manufacture legitimacy.
Did he coordinate messaging or actions with Grenell or those around him.
Did he benefit from the relationship.
Will he correct the public record.
If they want to laugh, they can laugh. But laughter is not an answer. Laughter is a posture. And when the posture is used to glide past allegations involving a minor, it stops being cheeky and starts being grotesque.
There is one more timeline detail worth holding onto, because it is the clearest indicator of intent. When I sent questions, I was still giving them the courtesy of responding without theatre. Buzhala chose theatre first. He did not simply ignore me. He tried to recruit an audience to deride the act of asking. Behrami joined in.
That is why waiting politely begins to look less like fairness and more like enabling. They have already published their response, in a sense. Their response is that they do not owe the public an explanation, and that anyone demanding one deserves a laugh.
So the article runs now, because the game has been revealed.
This is not a disagreement between journalists and commentators. It is a conflict between accountability and impunity. It is about whether public life in Kosovo and Albania is going to be organised around adult standards, where claims of influence and promises of intervention are interrogated, where alleged exploitation of minors is treated with horror rather than amusement, where foreign political operatives are not marketed as saviours without scrutiny.
If Buzhala wants to persuade readers that his Grenell endorsement was a rhetorical flourish and not a political instruction, he can say so. If he wants to clarify that he never urged Albanians in the US to mobilise, he can say so. If he wants to retract or contextualise the claim about a pledge to free detainees, he can say so. If Behrami wants to explain his use of Ambassador as mere habit rather than deliberate deception, he can say so.
They can still answer. There is still time to behave like adults.
But they should understand this. The crop, the mockery, the refusal to engage does not make the questions disappear. It makes the questions louder, and it makes the silence look less like oversight and more like knowledge.
And if the political culture they are helping to build is one where silence plus laughter is enough to glide past a possible blackmail scenario, then we have arrived at the precise kind of vulnerability that hostile actors love most. A country that cannot ask questions without being mocked is a country that can be steered without being noticed.
So let the questions sit in the open, uncut, unfunny, and unavoidable.
What did you know.
When did you know it.
Why did you promote him.
Why do you still.
And what, exactly, makes you so afraid of answering plainly.
Patrick Byrne Goes Public, Richard Grenell Says Nothing
In October, Patrick Byrne, a US businessman and political activist with long standing ties to Trump aligned networks, made public allegations that Richard Grenell was compromised and subject to blackmail by Russian intelligence. Speaking on Alex Jones’ programme
Patrick Byrne Goes Public, Richard Grenell Says Nothing
Patrick Byrne alleged on Infowars that Richard Grenell was compromised by Russian intelligence through sexual abuse of underaged boys in Serbia. Grenell has not responded. — The GPC I Unit.
Në mes të Chris Hillit dhe Richard Grenellit, unë do ta votoja Grenellin — Berat Buzhala, Nacionale.
The Conspiracy Against Kosovo’s Justice System Unraveled
In response to manipulated attacks, we’re granting free access to our latest investigative report, ensuring every reader sees the unfiltered truth. — The GPC I Unit.
A e din dikush me me tregu, Vudi a m'pyet per kuriozitet personal, a i boton dikund qito shkrime? — Berat Buzhala, Facebook Post, Dec 22, 2025.
Artan Behrami, Richard Grenell, and the Politics of Reinvention
Grenell is no ambassador, he’s a discarded operative, repackaged by Behrami to deceive a nation and resurrect a disinformation war against Kosovo’s justice system. — The GPC Balkan Watch.