During the presidential campaign, the security services interfered with the democratic electoral process. Now they complain about not receiving decorations!
President Karol Nawrocki recently promoted soldiers and officers, including to general ranks. However, TVN and Onet launched a media wave of outrage today over the head of state’s refusal to decorate some officers of the special services. They claim that the officers supposedly do not understand “why they are being punished”. Yet in reality, they know perfectly well – among those nominated for decorations are individuals who participated in or assisted with the dirty campaign conducted by certain media outlets during the presidential race, thereby interfering in the democratic election process.
During the campaign ahead of the presidential election, a massive smear operation was aimed at Karol Nawrocki, relying on various unverified pieces of information and insinuations, facilitated also by the involvement of the services. For some time now, circles aligned with the current government have been sounding the alarm that President Nawrocki refused to promote certain officers.
TVN and anonymous officers
Today, the media that attacked Karol Nawrocki during the campaign are writing about yet another refusal by the head of state, this time concerning applications for decorations and medals for officers of the Internal Security Agency (ABW). TVN24 – specifically Robert Zieliński, known for defending the reset-era intelligence officers – cited its unofficial sources and reported that the officers were to be decorated for combating acts of sabotage.
According to TVN24’s anonymous informants, there are allegedly “crisis moods” within the services due to the lack of decorations, and there is supposedly not “a shadow of understanding for this situation”. These sources claim that the officers allegedly do not understand “why they are being punished”.
Yet in reality, they know perfectly well – among those nominated for decorations are individuals who participated in or assisted with the dirty campaign conducted by certain media outlets during the presidential election. In other words, they interfered with the democratic selection of the head of state and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. As we recall, that smear operation – aimed at tipping the scales in favor of Rafał Trzaskowski – relied heavily on documents and information drawn directly from the archives of the Internal Security Agency (ABW).
The file and Mr. Jerzy
It resembled the so-called Anna Jarucka affair of 2005, when the services were used to eliminate Donald Tusk’s dangerous rival in the presidential race, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, but this time the interference was incomparably more serious.
As early as 12 April 2025, more than two weeks before Onet ignited the Mr. Jerzy affair, Prof. Sławomir Cenckiewicz warned on social media that the media would exploit findings contained in the vetting file of Karol Nawrocki. All this proved true. As Cenckiewicz pointed out – a key role in this process was allegedly played by Col. Jarosław Szafrański, director of the Classified Information Protection Department of the Internal Security Agency (ABW). The documents found in Nawrocki’s file were used not only in Onet’s publications – Civic Platform (PO) politician Krzysztof Brejza also attached to one of his posts on X a photo of a bank document confirming a cash payment of 12,000 PLN made by Nawrocki. According to the document’s description, it concerned the purchase of an apartment for “Mr. Jerzy”. Sharing these materials constituted a violation of the law.
The “sad gentlemen” and Onet’s major campaign
Let us also recall that during the first debate in Końskie, the “sad gentlemen” appeared, and when asked by Jarosław Olechowski from TV Republika whether they were from the services, they confirmed it. They simply refused to say from which ones. A few weeks later – when the second presidential debate was held in the same town – two masked men in a van equipped with professional jamming equipment disrupted the event. They did so while being protected by the police – which behaved very differently during the rallies of Rafał Trzaskowski.
The hate campaign was carried out by left-liberal media. At the peak of the smear effort against Nawrocki, as many as 19 articles about the PiS-backed candidate appeared simultaneously at the top of Onet’s homepage, all portraying him negatively.
Relying on anonymous sources, materials originating from the intelligence services, and accounts of individuals with compromised criminal pasts, journalists attempted to turn Nawrocki into an “pimp”, “fraudster”, “thug”, “gangster”, “sex trafficker” (these were the terms used for the civic candidate as a result of these publications). At the same time, materials and reports that could potentially harm his opponent – Trzaskowski – were dismissed or discredited.