Mario Nawfal wrote on social media about the findings of Gazeta Polska regarding USAID financing of “foreign interference”. He found that two journalistic data were made available for financing pro-LGBT activities and discrediting Polish border security. He pointed out that the journalistic investigation also revealed financing from American money of pro-LGBT activities and a campaign to discredit Polish border security.
🚨🇵🇱🇺🇸 USAID FUNDED FOREIGN INTERFERENCE? U.S. TAX DOLLARS HELPED UNDERMINE POLAND’S PiS GOVERNMENT
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) February 26, 2025
A Gazeta Polska investigation reveals millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars under Biden were funneled into Polish groups working to undermine PiS and push left-wing policies.
USAID… https://t.co/gCNWsmkcQb pic.twitter.com/Tsy6JCe7bV
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2025
In the comments under Musk’s post, we read, among other things:
“Elon’s reaction says it all. If USAID funded political interference in Poland, it’s a huge scandal.”
“Foreign interference using American taxpayers’ money? If true, this raises serious questions. How much of our money is being used to manipulate the politics of other nations?”
“How PiS Was Overthrown with Foreign Money,” a Special Reminder of the Article by Grzegorz Wierzchołowski and Maciej Kożuszek, Published in Gazeta Polska on February 19, 2025
During Joe Biden’s presidency, millions of dollars from American taxpayers were funneled to organizations in Poland that contributed to the overthrow of the most pro-American government in the history of the Third Polish Republic. U.S. government agencies such as USAID, the State Department, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded entities that hindered Poland’s defense against the Russian-Belarusian border crisis and fought against the Law and Justice (PiS) government, labeling it as “undemocratic” and “oppressive” toward women and LGBTQ+ individuals. These funds supported individuals who demanded the punishment of “criminal” Jarosław Kaczyński in the American press, financed organizations that whitewashed Hamas, and backed projects by Polish legal organizations. In an internal document, USAID also recommended combating inconvenient media by cutting off their advertising revenue, a tactic currently being used against TV Republika.
Donald Trump’s decision to halt funding to USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) and potentially dismantle the agency altogether has outraged and shocked left-wing circles worldwide. For years, thousands of activists had comfortably lived off American money, advancing the political and social agenda of the progressive “international.”
This also applied to Poland, especially in recent years. Activists themselves have candidly admitted that the flow of American money into Polish non-governmental organizations (particularly those engaged in left-wing political and social activism) intensified during the rule of the United Right. “American funds were heavily present in Poland in the 1990s and early 2000s, but later they shifted away from Central Europe. The situation changed three or four years ago when USAID reopened grants for this part of the continent. These were funds for pro-democracy activities, media, the rule of law, and initiatives related to equality and human rights,” said Dr. Dominika Bychawska-Siniarska, a lawyer from the Prague Civil Society Center, who has long been associated with Polish entities reliant on grants, in an interview with the Polish Press Agency.
Eliminating Independent Media
Alongside supporting selected foundations, organizations, and media, there were recommendations to combat those that posed a threat to the left-liberal status quo. In 2021, a month after Joe Biden’s inauguration, USAID created a 97-page internal document titled “Disinformation Primer.” The primer, marked “for internal use only,” was leaked years later thanks to the organization America First Legal, which fought in court for the right to access public information. The document recommends cooperation between governments, NGOs, and media to combat “information disorder.” It also proposes strategies such as promoting or suppressing content through search engines and cutting off advertising revenue to media outlets deemed to be spreading disinformation. The goal is to prevent the creation of “narratives that deviate from mainstream sources” and to stop individuals from sharing their own inquiries, which could lead to “populist expertise that shapes and supports their alternative worldview.”
The document, hidden from the public, suggests that some advertisers “inadvertently fund and strengthen platforms that spread disinformation.” Cutting off inconvenient media from advertising revenue would prevent them from “spreading their message.” Therefore, as stated in the USAID study, “efforts have been made to inform advertisers of the risks, such as threats to brand safety by placing ads next to objectionable content.” According to USAID, such an operation—cutting off allegedly “disinformation-spreading” media from advertisers—has another advantage: it allows for “redirecting funding to higher-quality information domains.” Sound familiar? An identical strategy has been applied to Telewizja Republika, currently Poland’s largest news station, since early 2024. This process involves state and non-governmental actors (such as Jerzy Owsiak, who pressures advertisers), liberal media (calling for boycotts), and major business players, often with foreign capital. The goal? To destroy TV Republika or at least reduce it to an insignificant, niche station while strengthening liberal, mainstream competition.
“We can work very hard on exclusion and inclusion lists to convince the global advertising industry to spend its advertising dollars on good news and good information,” said Jeanne Bourgault in Davos in 2024 during a panel titled “In Defense of the Truth.” Bourgault heads Internews Network (IN), an officially non-governmental organization whose goal is to “create a healthy information ecosystem.” Over the years, IN has received nearly $0.5 billion in grants from… USAID—American taxpayer money accounted for 95% of IN’s budget.
Mohammed, the Lighthouse Keeper, and PiS’s “Auschwitz”
USAID money has financed projects by the Lublin-based Homo Faber foundation, among others. The latest of these, implemented in January 2025, is “Discover Arabia,” advertised as “a series of meetings inviting Lublin residents to learn about the Arab world, culture, cuisine, customs, and to meet people from Arab countries living in Lublin.” In 2018, Homo Faber’s CEO Anna Dąbrowska accused the PiS government in the media of pursuing “anti-Ukrainian” and “anti-Islamic” policies. In 2021, Dąbrowska publicly read a letter from “Mohammed,” which was aggressive toward the Polish government and positive toward Berlin. “I took my wife and child and fled to Germany. I would not feel safe in Poland. The government, despite criticism from wonderful Poles and the international community, still categorically denies us the right to be refugees,” “Mohammed” reportedly wrote. Another Homo Faber activist claimed in the media that Poland “consciously sentences foreigners to death” and is trying to legalize “terrible practices.” It was the Lublin foundation that co-founded the Granica Group, whose demonstrations labeled Polish border guards as murderers. Additionally, in 2014, Homo Faber warned against the growing “Russophobia” in Poland.
Another beneficiary of USAID funds was the Center for Civic Education Foundation, which fought against Minister Przemysław Czarnek (“lex Czarnek”) and prepared pro-immigrant lesson plans for schools that criticized the PiS government. The Center for Civic Education was behind the “Latarnik Wyborczy” (Election Lighthouse), an online election test advertised in liberal media as a guide for undecided voters. The catch was that the test was designed in such a way that even after answering “I have no opinion” to all 25 questions, it indicated that the voter should support the Civic Coalition.
The Association for LGBT People “Tolerado” also received U.S. funding (directly from the embassy led by Marek Brzezinski), organizing “rainbow” protests outside the offices of PiS MPs in Gdańsk. One of the activists of “Tolerado” said during this campaign: “We are here to show the Czarnks, Żals, Jędraszewskis, and Duda, as well as all kinds of haters, that freedom, equality, and human rights are not made up. Despite all the hatred they spread, no one denies them these rights. Let us recall the recent loud words that Auschwitz did not come out of nowhere.”
Under the Democrats, the Empowering Children Foundation also received American financial support, primarily providing children with LGBT propaganda, such as through Rainbow Friday. This entity also participated in the media campaign against Minister Czarnek. There were many LGBT initiatives—sponsored with U.S. money—including: “Corporate Workshops for LGBTQIA Allies” (Campaign Against Homophobia), “Building Supportive Communities for LGBT+ People in Rural Areas” (Rural Support Foundation), “Building the Capacity of Activists and Service Providers Working with the LGBTQI+ Community” (Herstory Foundation), etc. After Trump’s recent decisions, the Director of the Campaign Against Homophobia lamented: “We spent the $100,000 per year that came to us through intermediaries from the US Department of Labor on advocacy, training for activists, and local fights against anti-LGBT resolutions. This pool was almost entirely spent, but we had a promise to continue – another $75,000. We wanted to spend it, among other things, on a large social campaign about civil partnerships. We lost PLN 350,000 overnight.”
Free Courts Funded by Foreign Money
USAID funds also went to the “Watchdog” Civic Network, whose representatives claim: “We are independent, and we keep an eye on the government.” These “independent” activists, sponsored from abroad, encouraged in June 2023—in the middle of the election campaign—that “During the long weekend in June, we were guests at three of the approximately one hundred planned stops of the Tour de Constitution (…). The event is attended by bar councils and organizations planning to observe election day. At ‘our’ stops, these were the Electoral Observatory and the Committee for the Defense of Democracy. And there are special guests. We met Dr. Hanna Machińska, prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek, and judge Igor Tuleya.” The Tour de Constitution itself—specifically its “school” project titled “I Am for Dignity”—was also supported by USAID money. And the Active Democracy Foundation, which has been implementing the anti-PiS Tour de Constitution for several years, is subsidized by the Batory Foundation, whose donors include the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. Office for Population and Refugees, and the European Commission.
We cannot forget about the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), responsible for distributing U.S. government money (including from USAID) for “pro-democracy” projects worldwide. From January 2016 to January 2025, Anne Applebaum, the wife of the current head of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Radosław Sikorski, sat on the NED board. As Gazeta Polska has established, there are many connections between USAID money and the legal and judicial community in Poland. NED scholarship holders include Michał Wawrykiewicz, an attorney, co-founder of the “Free Courts” initiative, and since 2024, a Member of the European Parliament from the Civic Coalition list. At the beginning of 2023, “Free Courts” reported: “On January 31, attorney Wawrykiewicz gave a lecture in Washington titled ‘Democratic Deconsolidation and the Weakening Rule of Law in Poland: Restoration, Resilience, and Determination.’ His guests and wonderful commentators were Prof. Włodzimierz Wróbel: an erudite, distinguished judge of the Supreme Court, and Prof. Fernanda Nicola from the American University Washington College of Law, a specialist in EU law. The lecture was held as part of a scholarship from the National Endowment for Democracy.” Wawrykiewicz, “as part of the scholarship,” zealously disgusted the American legal elite with the Polish state ruled by PiS. As reported by “Free Courts” in 2023: “On February 9, attorney Michał Wawrykiewicz met at the New York University School of Law with the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Prof. Margaret L. Satterthwaite, and her students. The subject of the meeting? Of course, the destruction of the rule of law in Poland. On February 13, at the Public Law Centre at the University of Ottawa, attorney Wawrykiewicz spoke about the collapse of the rule of law in Poland. This is not the end; attorney Wawrykiewicz also held various lectures and meetings at universities: Georgetown, University of Utah, and again at NYU. On February 25, attorney Michał Wawrykiewicz organized a screening of the film ‘Judges Under Pressure’ in Washington, with a foreword by director Kacper Lisowski. The culmination of the entire month was a meeting in Congress on violations of the rule of law in Poland. Attorney Michał Wawrykiewicz presented the report ‘2500 Days of Lawlessness’—a kind of chronicle of the destruction of the justice system and the battle for its independence created by the Free Courts.”
In the fall of 2024, “Free Courts” implemented the NED-supported project “Protecting Free Courts in Europe” and a series of seminars, “Attacked Justice—Lessons from Poland.” As part of this project, a meeting for lawyers, judges, and students was organized in Budapest.
In November 2024, as part of a project financed by NED, “Free Courts” and the District Bar Council in Warsaw invited attendees to a “press breakfast in connection with the anniversary of the judgment in the Wałęsa v. Poland case by the European Court of Human Rights (application no. 50849/21), which is a pilot judgment.” There was also talk of “neo-judges” and “neo-KRS,” and the special guest was Deputy Minister of Justice Dariusz Mazur.
In 2023, “Free Courts” launched the educational project “European Judicial League.” The initiative was financed by USAID and the German Bölla Foundation (funded by the German federal budget). The campaign was advertised on social media by the leaders of “Free Courts”: Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram, known from the “Wejście Group,” and the current Deputy Minister of Justice Maria Ejchart, who, incidentally, in 2011-2012—as we read in her biography—”at the invitation of USAID, co-authored workshops in Libya aimed at introducing topics related to democracy and human rights.”
That’s not all. In December 2023, after Donald Tusk took power, the USAID-funded project “ROOF—Rule of Law Facilitation Project” was launched. This is a series of seminars on “restoring the rule of law” in Poland. The seminars sponsored from abroad were attended by, among others: Judge Waldemar Żurek, NSA Judge Aleksandra Wrzesińska-Nowacka, Prosecutor Jacek Bilewicz (“Lex Super Omnia”), Maciej Nowicki (President of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights), and PAP Chief Wojciech Tumidalski.
Holding Kaczyński Accountable
The fact that Trump cut off the source of dollars has severely affected, among others, “Krytyka Polityczna,” which often publishes anti-American texts, and the leftist Institute of Reportage by Mariusz Szczygieł. However, NED money has also been used by, among others, Salam Lab (Association of Laboratory of Action for Peace) fighting “Islamophobia” (in one of the articles on the association’s website, it is explained that the source of Islamophobia is… the lack of a Muslim community in a given country). Salam Lab publishes texts whitewashing Hamas and presenting this terrorist organization as a “social movement” that “implements a broad social and aid program, runs schools, clinics, and is strongly connected to the functioning of the poorest in particular.” The association also criticized the referendum accompanying the parliamentary elections in Poland, describing it as “an example of the brutalization of public debate.” And it called the video in which Mateusz Morawiecki speaks of Tusk as “the greatest threat to our security”… “incitement to hatred.”
From the public reports of the “Kultura Liberalna” Foundation by Karolina Wigura and Jarosław Kuisz, we learn that in the years 2020-2023, this entity also implemented projects financed by NED. Moreover, Wigura herself admitted on Facebook: “Donald Trump’s decision to suspend American aid for foreign organizations is spreading far and wide and also concerns us.” As part of one such project, an English-language database of “infographics that will illustrate the mechanisms of the rule of law crisis in Poland in a simple and attractive way” was created. The highest expression of the foundation’s “independence” was an interview posted on YouTube in December 2023 by a representative of “Kultura Liberalna” (sponsored by NED) with the aforementioned attorney Michał Wawrykiewicz (a NED scholarship holder). Of course, these affiliations were not mentioned, and the topic of the conversation was the need to hold PiS accountable.
Kuisz and Wigura were the authors of a January 2023 text published in the New York Times. “Poland is not the friend it seems in the West,” the title read. The authors warned Americans that the government in Poland is mistakenly perceived in the West as “good guys” because of its support for Ukraine. The most shocking was the postulate urging the Biden administration to suspend military aid to Poland during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Washington could make military aid—last year the US invested $288 million in the Polish army—contingent on [the Polish government—editor’s note] compliance with democratic standards and the rule of law,” wrote Kuisz and Wigura.
And when PiS lost power, at the end of 2023, Kuisz and Wigura (this time in the “Journal of Democracy,” the official journal of NED) indicated that the December 13 coalition “must deal with transitional justice,” focusing on “whether and how criminal suspects can be punished for specific acts.” And they wrote directly: “the leader of the Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński, must be held accountable,” adding that “other PiS politicians are taking the blame for his crimes.” Let us add here that NED is not the only source of foreign funding for “Kultura Liberalna.” The foundation has received grants from the European Commission, the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation, the ZEIT Stiftung, and the Fritt Ord Foundation.
The calls to punish Kaczyński for his “crimes” sound even more shocking in the context of what Mike Benz (founder of the libertarian organization Foundation For Freedom Online) recently revealed on Joe Rogan’s show. Benz stated: “When Poland elected a president who was not friendly to them, NED began to push for the imprisonment of their political enemies (…). They (as a foreign entity) also provided a list of names [of people] who should be prosecuted by the government to prevent the current opposition from returning to power.”
Owsiak’s Auditor
There are so many foundations, associations, and individuals in Poland linked to USAID and NED that describing their projects could fill an entire weekly magazine. These include the Polish Migration Forum, which called not only for Poland to stop building a border wall but also for the demilitarization of the border zone (!). There’s also Martin Mycielski, associated with the Open Dialogue Foundation and KOD International, who completed the “USAID training program on combating corruption, transparency, and public integrity.” Another example is the “Watch DOCS” documentary film festival, which screened, among other things, an anti-PiS film titled Judges Under Pressure and hosted a meeting with activists from the Abortion Dream Team.
But there’s another interesting thread to this story. The official website of the company Audit C-Land states that it is one of only three companies operating in Poland approved by USAID to audit expenditures financed by the aid funds of this U.S. agency. Audit C-Land is a company co-owned since 2002 (and chaired since 2020) by Jan Mroczkowski—a long-time member of the supervisory board of Jerzy Owsiak’s company, Złoty Melon. The website also reveals that as early as 1996, Audit C-Land employees participated in the conference “USAID’s Audit Program for Indigenous Grantees and Contractors.”
The appearance of Audit C-Land’s website suggests that it has not been updated for a long time (though the company itself remains active and operational). Did Audit C-Land audit the use of USAID funds in recent years, or only during the first two decades of the Third Polish Republic? By the time this issue went to print, we were unable to verify this information, and the company did not even respond to our earlier inquiries, which we sent on February 4.