Exclusive-Democrats demand Rubio explain visa for wanted former Polish official
By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – Two top U.S. House Democrats on Friday asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to explain whether his top aide helped expedite a visa that allowed a wanted former Polish Cabinet minister to flee Hungary to the United States, evading an extradition request from Polish authorities.
If true, “these events and decisions constitute a gross abuse of power and disregard of U.S. legal immigration processes,” Representatives Gregory Meeks and James Raskin wrote in a letter to Rubio reviewed by Reuters.
Meeks and Raskin are senior Democrats on the House foreign affairs and judiciary committees, respectively.
The visa issuance represents “an unprecedented level of interference in the domestic politics and judicial systems of two countries that have long been treaty allies of the United States,” the duo wrote, referring to Poland and Hungary, both NATO members.
Their letter cited a Reuters report published on Monday that said Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau directed senior State Department officials to facilitate and expedite a U.S. visa for former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro.
Ziobro is wanted in Poland on 26 charges stemming mainly from his alleged misuse of money from a crime victims fund. He has denied wrongdoing, saying he was the victim of a politically motivated campaign by Poland’s ruling pro-European Union coalition.
The State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The government of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it planned to try Ziobro and that prosecutors were preparing an extradition request to the United States.
ZIOBRO RECEIVED A VISA BEFORE POSSIBLE RETURN
Ziobro fled to Hungary in January and received asylum from former Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Warsaw had hoped that Orban’s defeat in the April elections to his pro-EU rival Peter Magyar would enable Ziobro to return to Poland. Magyar said he would return it on his first day in office.
Instead, Landau said, he instructed senior officials in the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington to instruct the U.S. embassy in Budapest to issue Ziobro a visa, one of whom said it was a journalist visa.
Ziobro obtained his visa before Magyar was sworn in on May 9 and traveled first to Italy and then to the United States on a refugee certificate because his Polish passport was invalid, according to Polish prosecutors.
Meeks and Raskin noted in their letter that Ziobro could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted of the charges he faces, including allegations that he used some crime victims’ compensation funds to purchase spyware to use against his political rivals.
MPs said granting Ziobro a visa threatened to “invite a significant diplomatic crisis” with Poland. They demanded that the Trump administration comply with extradition requests from Warsaw.
They wanted Rubio to answer questions about the case in writing and provide a personal briefing to their committee no later than June 21.
Questions included whether US President Donald Trump or any of his aides were involved in approving Ziobro’s visa and on what grounds the visa was granted.
The two also requested any documents and communications between Landau, the Bureau of Consular Affairs, the U.S. embassies in Warsaw and Budapest, and regarding the involvement of U.S. Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Don Durfee)
