US Politics
Trump official Christopher Laundau granted visa to fugitive Polish minister Zbigniew Ziobro, wanted for misuse of funds
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U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau instructed officials to facilitate a visa for a former Polish cabinet minister, enabling him to flee to the United States from Hungary, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Zbigniew Ziobro, Poland’s former justice minister, is currently sought for prosecution in his home country.
Ziobro, the architect of contentious changes to the Polish judicial system under the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) from 2015-2023, faces 26 charges.
These largely stem from the alleged misuse of money from a crime victims’ fund for political gain – reforms that the E.U. said undermined the rule of law.
Ziobro says he is the victim of a politically motivated campaign by Poland’s ruling pro-European Union coalition and denies wrongdoing.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Reporters were unable to reach Ziobro in the United States, and his lawyer in Poland, Bartosz Lewandowski, said that he would convey questions, but no response was forthcoming.
While the Trump administration has made it a priority to support conservative views in Europe, granting a visa to a politician facing criminal charges by a U.S.-allied government is highly unusual.
Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orban granted Ziobro asylum in January. Warsaw had hoped that Orban’s defeat by pro-EU rival Peter Magyar in an April election would see Ziobro returned to Poland. Magyar had said that he would extradite him to Poland on his first day in office.
Instead, Landau directed senior officials from the State Department’s Consular Affairs Bureau in Washington to instruct the U.S. embassy in Budapest to issue a visa for Ziobro, said three sources, one of whom said it was a journalist visa.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss non-public details about the case.
As a result of Landau’s intervention, the former justice minister was able to secure his visa ahead of Magyar’s May 9 swearing-in.
The sources were unaware of any involvement by U.S. President Donald Trump in the decision and reporters could not determine what role, if any, Secretary of State Marco Rubio played.
Landau learned of Ziobro’s case earlier this spring from Tom Rose, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, and considered the ex-minister someone who was unjustly prosecuted, a fourth source familiar with the matter said.
In directing the senior officials in the Consular Affairs Bureau to issue the visa, the No. 2 U.S. diplomat justified the urgency by presenting the matter as “a national security issue,” one source added. Reuters could not determine the rationale for labeling it a national security matter.
Landau declined to comment for this story. A State Department spokesperson did not address a detailed list of questions, including ones asking about either Rubio or Rose’s involvement.
“Due to visa record confidentiality, we have nothing to share on this matter,” the spokesperson added.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Poland’s Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek told public broadcaster TVP Info on Tuesday he was very surprised.
“If someone in the U.S. in an important position believes that Ziobro is needed for national security… if he has indeed been granted some kind of extraordinary status, then I would like our ally to talk to us about this and see what evidence we have gathered in the case of Minister Ziobro, because this evidence is truly very strong,” he said.
He added that prosecutors have an extradition request prepared, but Poland was considering when would be the best time to send it. “We will do everything to bring Mr. Ziobro to justice in Poland,” he said.
A spokesperson for Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s government did not comment.
’Lawfare’
The Trump administration says European conservatives often are targeted by “lawfare,” a term used by supporters of Trump’s MAGA movement to describe what they say has been the unjust weaponization of the judicial system against them.
Critics in the United States have leveled similar charges against Trump, saying his administration is using prosecutorial power to target perceived adversaries.
Ziobro, 55, is the architect of court reforms that the European Union said had reduced the independence of Poland’s judiciary while PiS was in power. He is accused of misusing money from the Justice Fund, designed to help victims of crime, including to purchase the Pegasus spyware system, which was allegedly used against domestic political opponents.
Pegasus can turn a mobile phone into a spying device and has been used by various governments against opposition figures and journalists.
Ziobro’s flight to the U.S. highlights the delicate balancing act that Tusk’s government faces in dealing with the United States.
While U.S.-Poland ties have generally been stable, the Pentagon last week canceled the deployment of 4,000 U.S. troops to the country, saying only that “it made the most sense for that brigade to not do its deployment in theater.”
A Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson said last week that Warsaw would be asking Washington and Budapest for “the legal and factual basis” under which Ziobro was able to leave Hungary. The Polish government already had annulled his passports.
Ziobro began working as a TV commentator for Polish broadcaster TV Republika, the network announced on May 10.
“I’m in the United States … It’s an incredibly complex, beautiful country, the world’s strongest democracy,” Ziobro said in a May 10 appearance on TV Republika.