By Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau instructed senior State Department officials to facilitate and approve a visa for a fugitive former Polish cabinet minister, allowing him to flee to the United States from Hungary, three people familiar with the matter said.
Poland is seeking to prosecute former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, the architect of changes to the Polish judicial system that the EU has said undermined the rule
of law during the 2015-2023 rule of the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).
He faces 26 charges stemming mainly from his alleged misuse of money for political gain from a crime victims fund. He has denied wrongdoing, contending he is the victim of a politically motivated campaign by Poland's ruling pro-European Union coalition, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters was unable to reach Ziobro in the United States. His lawyer in Poland, Bartosz Lewandowski, said he would convey questions to Ziobro, who did not respond.
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 Reuters 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.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's office and the country's Justice Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar's government did not comment.
U.S. SUPPORT FOR EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVES
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.
The Justice Fund did not respond to a request for comment.
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 told Reuters 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 passport.
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.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Landay in Washington, and Anna Koper, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Editing by Don Durfee and Daniel Wallis)
