The prosecution has admitted that it monitored statements by Law and Justice (PiS) politicians, including Zbigniew Ziobro, made during the party’s October congress concerning judicial reform. As investigators explain, this was done to check whether “the grounds justifying the necessity of pre-trial detention in the case of Zbigniew Ziobro remain valid.”
Let us recall yesterday’s article by Niezależna.pl. We reported that a team of the National Prosecutor’s Office investigating the spending of funds from the so-called Justice Fund has been monitoring statements by PiS politicians unrelated to the substance of the charges. Among other things, the party’s October congress and opinions concerning the judicial reform planned by PiS after regaining power were subjected to scrutiny. The decision was issued by the head of the team, Piotr Woźniak, as evidenced by the content of a memo obtained by Niezależna.pl.
The prosecutor’s memo
It follows that, on his instruction – as head of Investigative Team No. 2 of the National Prosecutor’s Office – an examination of online resources was conducted to identify materials concerning statements made by Zbigniew Ziobro during the panel “Polska Sprawiedliwości – Reforma Trzeciej Władzy,” held at the Program Convention “Thinking Poland” in Katowice on 25 October 2025.
What were investigators particularly interested in? As the memo indicates, the focus was in particular on “statements concerning planned actions related to judicial reform in the event that today’s opposition regains power.”
The memo contains an absurd entry stating that plans for actions reforming the judiciary “may be linked to the proceedings conducted by Investigative Team No. 2 of the National Prosecutor’s Office against Marcin Romanowski and other suspects for an offence under Article 231 §§ 1 and 2 of the Penal Code.”
The examination covered a website and the official PiS profile on the YouTube platform. Transcriptions of excerpts from the statements were then prepared.
The memo lists participants in the panel. In addition to Ziobro, these included party politicians such as Michał Woś, Paweł Jabłoński and Marcin Warchoł, as well as academics Prof. Anna Łabno and Prof. Artur Kotowski, and the vice-president of the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture (Ordo Iuris), Łukasz Bernaciński.
Explanations from the prosecution
We asked the National Prosecutor’s Office to explain how statements by PiS politicians, including Ziobro, relate to the investigation into the Justice Fund. We also asked what connection the instruction issued by Prosecutor Woźniak, described in the article, has to the scope of the investigation.
In a written response, the spokesperson for the National Prosecutor’s Office stressed that “a prosecutor is obliged to verify whether the specific grounds justifying the necessity of applying a preventive measure in the form of pre-trial detention against a suspect remain valid.”
As he argues, such specific grounds include, for example, the risk of flight or hiding, or the so-called risk of obstructing proceedings, that is, the risk of unlawfully hindering the course of the proceedings.
By way of example, if a suspect claims in the media that they are abroad because they fear criminal liability or do not wish to participate in proceedings conducted against them, or states that they will not voluntarily take part in certain procedural actions, such statements may be relevant for the court when determining the specific ground of hiding or flight. In the prosecutor’s assessment, statements of this kind confirm the necessity of applying pre-trial detention against a given suspect. Similarly, announcements related to unlawfully obstructing criminal proceedings, for example by persuading witnesses or suspects to give false testimony or by threatening officials for carrying out procedural actions – wrote Nowak.
According to him, in determining whether specific grounds for pre-trial detention exist, “the suspect’s conduct is relevant not only at the time of the act, but also, and even primarily, in the course of the proceedings, including after an application for pre-trial detention has been submitted.”
In the case of Zbigniew Z., a number of his public statements (available online) confirm, in the prosecutor’s view, the existence of a risk of obstructing proceedings, which constitutes a specific ground for applying pre-trial detention. In these statements, the suspect, among other things, publicly directs threats at officials, judges and prosecutors. A number of statements also make it plausible that there is a risk of influencing witnesses and other suspects – the National Prosecutor’s Office believes.
Are Ziobro’s words an “attempt to obstruct proceedings” and to influence witnesses and suspects? An extraordinarily bold thesis. We quote Ziobro’s statements from the PiS congress.
“Today, under Polish conditions, the word ‘rule of law’ sounds like a bitter irony, because we live in a country – as I would put it – where the authorities openly violate the constitution and statutes and forcibly take over public media,” Zbigniew Ziobro began his speech.
The politician went on to list that “court presidents are now being removed, the National Prosecutor is being barred from entering his office, and judges of the Constitutional Tribunal are being destroyed by not being paid for their work.”
“What we are dealing with is, in fact, barbarism, which under the mask of a fight for the rule of law and democracy, is in reality introducing militant democracy. Because Donald Tusk once said so,” Zbigniew Ziobro said.