WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau directed senior State Department officials to expedite and approve a visa for a fugitive former Polish cabinet minister, enabling him to escape to the United States from Hungary, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Poland seeks to prosecute former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who orchestrated changes to the Polish judicial system that the EU claims undermined the rule of law during the 2015-2023 tenure of the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).
Ziobro faces 26 charges, primarily related to his alleged misuse of funds from a crime victims fund for political purposes. He denies any wrongdoing, asserting that he is targeted by a politically motivated campaign from Poland’s pro-European Union ruling coalition.
Speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk insisted that Poland would persist in its efforts to bring Ziobro before a Polish court. “We will certainly be very consistent, and no one can expect us to give up,” he declared.
Efforts to reach Ziobro in the United States were unsuccessful. His lawyer in Poland, Bartosz Lewandowski, stated he would pass on questions to Ziobro, who did not respond.
The Trump administration has prioritized supporting conservative views in Europe, but granting a visa to a politician facing criminal charges from a U.S. ally remains highly unusual.
Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orban granted Ziobro asylum in January. Poland had anticipated that Orban’s defeat by pro-EU rival Peter Magyar in April would lead to Ziobro’s return to Poland. Magyar had pledged to extradite him on his first day in office.
Instead, Landau instructed the State Department’s Consular Affairs Bureau in Washington to direct the U.S. embassy in Budapest to issue a visa for Ziobro, according to three sources, one of whom indicated it was a journalist visa.
The sources, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential details, revealed that Landau’s intervention allowed Ziobro to secure his visa before Magyar’s May 9 inauguration.
The sources did not know if U.S. President Donald Trump was involved in the decision, and Reuters could not ascertain what involvement, if any, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had.
Landau was informed about Ziobro’s case earlier this spring by Tom Rose, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, and regarded the former minister as unfairly prosecuted, according to a fourth source familiar with the situation.
In directing officials to issue the visa, the No. 2 U.S. diplomat justified the urgency by labeling the matter a “national security issue,” though Reuters was unable to determine the reasoning behind this classification.
Landau declined to comment on the story, and a State Department spokesperson did not address detailed inquiries, including those regarding 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 expressed surprise on TVP Info on Tuesday.
“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 stated.
He mentioned that prosecutors have prepared an extradition request, and Poland is considering the best timing to send it. “We will do everything to bring Mr. Ziobro to justice in Poland,” he emphasized.
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said at a Tuesday press conference that Ziobro did not travel directly to the U.S. from Hungary.
“I do not know whether he travelled from Vienna, Paris or Brussels, but he did not leave Hungary for the United States,” he said. “At present, his whereabouts are unknown even to the Hungarian authorities.”
U.S. SUPPORT FOR EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVES
The Trump administration claims European conservatives are often subjected to “lawfare,” a term used by Trump’s MAGA movement supporters to describe the alleged misuse of the judicial system against them.
In the U.S., critics have similarly accused Trump of using prosecutorial power against perceived adversaries.
Ziobro, 55, is credited with court reforms that the European Union criticized for compromising the independence of Poland’s judiciary under PiS. He is accused of misusing the Justice Fund, meant to assist crime victims, including allegedly acquiring the Pegasus spyware system to target domestic political opponents.
Pegasus can convert a mobile phone into a spying device and has been used by various governments against opposition figures and journalists.
Ziobro’s escape to the U.S. underscores the complex diplomatic balancing act Tusk’s government faces with the United States.
While U.S.-Poland relations have been generally stable, the Pentagon recently canceled the deployment of 4,000 U.S. troops to Poland, stating only that “it made the most sense for that brigade to not do its deployment in theater.”
A Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson told Reuters that Warsaw would request Washington and Budapest to provide “the legal and factual basis” for Ziobro’s departure from Hungary. The Polish government had already annulled his passports.
Ziobro has started working as a TV commentator for Polish broadcaster TV Republika, which announced his role 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.
