Attorney Robert Amsterdam’s Critical Letter to Senators Jeanne Shaheen & Thom Tillis

Senator Jeanne Shaheen
Ranking Member
Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Senator Thom Tillis
Member
Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Dear Senators:

We write as counsel to Samuel Karapetyan, leader of the Strong Armenia party, a principal opposition party in Armenia, regarding your April 17, 2026 letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Although your letter avoids naming Mr. Karapetyan, it plainly identifies him by description. We understand a similar letter was sent to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet. These letters are extraordinarily prejudicial and should be retracted immediately.

Your letters are official interventions by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent to major American technology platforms in the midst of an Armenian parliamentary campaign. As such, they carry the weight of United States governmental authority and create a serious risk of distorting the democratic process in Armenia. When senior senators urge private platforms to act against a leading opposition figure without disclosing the factual basis for their allegations, they do not protect democratic integrity; they threaten it.

Most troublingly, your letters substitute innuendo for evidence. They string together circumstantial references and invite platforms to infer that Mr. Karapetyan is implicated in foreign interference, yet they identify no concrete act attributable to him, no account or page under his control, no coordinated network he directed, and no improper financing he provided. That is not responsible oversight. It is the use of official position to manufacture suspicion by implication rather than proof. In the middle of a parliamentary campaign, such conduct threatens not only grave prejudice to Mr. Karapetyan, but also improper interference with lawful opposition speech and with the right of Armenian voters to make their own political choices free from external pressure. As the U.S. Supreme Court underscored in Murthy v. Missouri (2024), when powerful public officials press dominant social media platforms on matters of political speech, such communications cannot be treated as mere suggestions, divorced from the coercive weight of public office.

In your April 17 letter, you state that “no foreign power should be permitted to influence the results of Armenia’s sovereign decisions.” We agree entirely. But that principle cannot be invoked selectively. When members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee use the authority of their office to urge major American technology platforms to act on opaque allegations aimed at a principal opposition leader, they too risk influencing Armenia’s sovereign democratic choices. It is no answer to denounce foreign interference while engaging in it yourselves.

Recent congressional scrutiny has underscored the dangers of official pressure on major technology companies in matters touching political speech.¹ Your letters illustrate exactly that danger. In the final stretch of a parliamentary campaign, to signal to Meta and Alphabet that a leading opposition figure and his movement are tainted by foreign manipulation is to invite heightened scrutiny, suppression, or unequal treatment of lawful political speech associated with that opposition. That is not a neutral act. It predictably advantages the incumbent authorities in Yerevan and burdens those seeking to challenge them through democratic means.

That is particularly irresponsible because the most serious threats to a free and fair election in Armenia arise not principally from abroad, but from the conduct of the incumbent government itself. Prime Minister Pashinyan has been widely criticized for attacks on freedom of speech, freedom of association, religious liberty, and the proper constitutional balance between church and state. His demeaning attacks on the leader of the Armenian Holy Apostolic Church, together with the imprisonment of political opponents, including our client, have already raised profound concerns about political pluralism and the fairness of the present electoral environment. At the same time, the government remains under intense public scrutiny for the mass displacement of more than 120,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and other grave setbacks suffered under its leadership. Yet your letter to Meta ignores that reality entirely.

Mr. Karapetyan stands for an Armenian election that is free, fair, and wholly unaffected by disinformation or improper influence from any foreign source, including Russia. He does not act for the Russian government and rejects any attempt to portray his political movement as an instrument of foreign interests. His advocacy has been directed toward the defense of Armenian sovereignty, the rights of Armenians, and the protection of the Armenian Apostolic Church. For that, he has been imprisoned and deprived of legitimately owned assets. He is hardly alone: clerics, journalists, and other political opponents have likewise been subjected to false charges and coercive measures in the run-up to the 7 June election. In these circumstances, your letter risks reinforcing a false narrative already being deployed to marginalize the opposition rather than protecting Armenia’s democracy.

By using alleged foreign association to cast suspicion on a principal opposition leader without proof, your letters deploy a tactic uncomfortably akin to Russia’s ‘foreign agents’ law: the stigmatization and sidelining of political opponents through the suggestion of external taint. Democratic institutions should repudiate that method, not reproduce it.

Accordingly, we demand that you retract these letters immediately and refrain from any further effort to interfere in Armenia’s democratic process through official pressure on private platforms or otherwise.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should not use the prestige of their office to stigmatize a principal opposition leader in a sovereign foreign election by implication rather than proof. We have copied Mr. Zuckerberg so that Meta is on notice of our client’s position and of the grave prejudice and evidentiary deficiencies reflected in your correspondence.

Yours truly,

Robert Amsterdam
Founder and Managing Partner
Amsterdam & Partners LLP