US President Donald Trump intervened personally in granting an entry visa into his county for Zbigniew Ziobro, the former justice minister in the last Polish Conservative (PiS) government.
He was reported to have overruled US State Department concerns and acted in line with the requests emanating from Poland’s opposition.
Ziobro, who last year was granted political asylum in Hungary by then-prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government, on May 9 left that country and flew into Newark Liberty Airport in the US.
New Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who took his oath of office on the same day, had promised after his landslide election victory on April 13 that his new government would find a way to send Ziobro back to Poland along with his former deputy Marcin Romanowski, who is facing similar indictments and also had been granted political asylum in Hungary.
Ziobro served as justice minister for eight years from 2015 to 2023 and was the face of controversial judicial reforms that attracted the ire of both the domestic opposition and Brussels for allegedly bringing the Polish judiciary under PiS control.
He has been indicted by the present centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk on 26 charges. These include the alleged organisation of a criminal group that was supposed to syphon off public funds from the country’s Justice fund to organisations and causes favoured by the ex-minister and his allies and of illegally purchasing spy software later used to to monitor some opposition politicians.
The PiS ex-minister is not being accused of deriving any personal financial benefit from his actions and the money that was allegedly misappropriated went to conservative-leaning civil society organisations and was spent on security and crime prevention in regions in which Ziobro’s allies were standing for election.
While the Tusk government alleges that Ziobro and his associates broke the rules with regard to allocating public funds, he disagrees and points to the fact that all procedures were followed and that the Pegasus spyware that was purchased was used to prevent or track crimes and that its use had been sanctioned by the courts.
According to Ziobro ally and PiS MEP Jacek Ozdoba, the ex-minister is facing a “witch hunt” and a “purely political operation” by the Tusk government.
Ozdoba believes that Ziobro is being attacked because, when in office, his investigation led to the indictment of close associates of Tusk’s such as the PM’s family attorney Roman Giertych for money laundering and former transport minister Slawomir Nowak for corruption.
Although all in. the PiS agree that Ziobro is being persecuted by the Tusk government and should not face detention, some believe his leaving the country plays into the Tusk administration’s narrative of being an admission of guilt.
Poland’s pro-Tusk majority parliament last year lifted Ziobro’s immunity and prosecutors sought his temporary detention on the grounds that he could flee and/or attempt to influence witnesses.
Before the courts could rule on that though, Ziobro, who has over the past three years been treated for cancer, left for Hungary where he was granted political asylum by the Orbán administration on the grounds that he was unlikely to face a fair trial in Poland.
Despite a court ruling seeking his temporary detention, the authorities have not thus far been able to obtain a European Arrest Warrant, therefore Ziobro’s entry into the US on an ordinary travel visa went unimpeded.
Ziobro has said that he would only be willing to return voluntarily to Poland “when the rule of law is restored” because, under Tusk’s government, it would be impossible for him to receive a fair trial.
Tusk’s justice minister Waldemar Żurek confirmed that Ziobro had been spotted at a US airport and said that Warsaw would request his extradition.
That request is likely to prove a bone of contention between the Tusk government and the Trump administration since the US President has made it clear he sympathises with PiS in Poland and had backed the PiS’ successful presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki in last year’s elections.
US Republican members of Congress and Senators have already gone on the record criticising the Tusk government on its alleged breaches of the rule of law and media freedom.
Since coming to power in December 2023, the Tusk government has taken over the prosecution service without meeting the legal obligation to consult with President Nawrocki. It has also put the public media into a state of liquidation to speedily take it over outside of the existing media law. In addition, it has challenged the status of 3,000 judges appointed during the lifetime of the PiS government as well as refusing to abide by rulings of courts it considers illegitimately constituted.
Alongside that, the Tusk administration has issued a raft of indictments against several PiS politicians including the former PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Ziobro and a number of PiS MPs who served as ministers in the last government.
Poland took umbrage with Orbán’s government and recalled its ambassador in protest at the granting of political asylum to PiS officials indicted in Poland.
Poland could not afford such a course of action with the US, though, since there are 10,000 US troops stationed in Poland and the country is a major importer of US liquid gas, arms and nuclear power know-how and technology.
On May 9, Trump said he may relocate US forces withdrawn from Germany to Poland, a matter he had already discussed with Nawrocki in the autumn of last year.
Tusk has taken a different view declaring his “reluctance” towards “poaching” US troops from Germany because he feels that this would “undermine solidarity and co-operation”.
Tusk is viewed in Washington as hostile to the US President ever since, while campaigning to win the election in Poland in 2023, Tusk said that Trump was probably a Russian asset.
Tusk aside, though, the US administration regards Poland to be a model ally because of its high defence spending, tight control of its border in the east of the country and an energy policy of finding alternatives to Russian gas and oil.
