By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – Two top U.S. House of Representatives Democrats on Friday asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to explain whether his top deputy helped expedite a visa that allowed a wanted former Polish cabinet minister to flee to the U.S. from Hungary, evading an extradition request from Polish authorities.
If true, “these events and decisions constitute a massive abuse of power and disregard for the legal immigration processes of the United States,” Representatives Gregory Meeks and James Raskin wrote in a letter to Rubio that Reuters reviewed.
Meeks and Raskin are the senior Democrats on the House foreign relations and judiciary committees respectively.
The granting of the visa represents “an unprecedented level of interference in the domestic politics and judicial systems of two longstanding U.S. treaty allies,” the pair wrote, referring to Poland and Hungary, both of which are NATO members.
Their letter cited a Reuters report published on Monday that 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, mainly stemming from his alleged misuse of money from a crime victims’ fund. He has denied wrongdoing, saying he is the victim of a politically motivated campaign by Poland’s ruling pro-European Union coalition.
White House directed inquiries to the State Department. “As a general matter, we do not comment on congressional correspondence,” a State Department spokesperson said.
The government of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says it intends to put Ziobro on trial and that prosecutors have prepared an extradition request to the United States.
ZIOBRO SECURED VISA AHEAD OF LIKELY EXTRADITION
Ziobro fled in January to Hungary and received asylum from former Prime Minister Viktor Orban. 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 on his first day in office.
Instead, Landau directed senior officials in 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.
Ziobro secured his visa ahead of Magyar’s May 9 swearing-in and, according to Polish prosecutors, traveled to Italy and then to the U.S. on a refugee document as his Polish passport had been invalidated.
In their letter, Meeks and Raskin noted that Ziobro faces up to 25 years in jail if convicted on the charges he faces, including allegations he used some crime victims compensation funds to buy spyware to use against political rivals.
The lawmakers said that giving the visa to Ziobro threatened to “invite a significant diplomatic crisis” with Poland. They demanded that the Trump administration comply with any extradition requests from Warsaw.
They asked that Rubio answer in writing questions about the case and provide an in-person briefing to their committees no later than June 21.
The questions included whether U.S. President Donald Trump or any of his aides were involved in approving Ziobro’s visa and the grounds on which it was granted.
The pair also demanded any documents and communications between Landau, the Bureau of Consular Affairs, the U.S. embassies in Warsaw and Budapest, and any related to any involvement of Tom Rose, the U.S. ambassador to Poland.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Don Durfee and Nick Zieminski)
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