Polish PM’s advisor asked state TV to attack court that issued negative ruling, according to email leak

An advisor to Poland’s prime minister sent a request to the head of public television asking it to “attack” a court which had issued a ruling against the head of government, according to a leaked email. The station, TVP, subsequently broadcast news reports closely matching the request.

Separately, a secretary in the prime minister’s chancellery is alleged to have proposed to the Polish ambassador in Washington that they try to “politically eliminate” a US congressman who had criticised Poland by encouraging support for his Republic rivals.

The emails in question are the latest in a series – purported to be from the hacked account of the prime minister’s chief of staff, Michał Dworczyk – that have been leaking since June.

The government has confirmed that Dworczyk’s account was hacked, but has refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of individual leaked emails. However, some have been confirmed as genuine by individuals who sent or received them.

Among the latest batch of leaks is an email dated 27 September 2018 and purportedly from Mariusz Chłopik, a close associate of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. It was sent to the boss of TVP, Jacek Kurski, and the head of the body responsible for news in public media, Jarosław Olechowski. Dworczyk was copied in.

The message was sent in response to a ruling by Warsaw’s court of appeal against Morawiecki. The court had ordered the prime minister to issue a public correction of a false statement he had made on the campaign trail about the previous government’s record.

“We have a request that tomorrow TVP very nicely attack those people who issued this verdict and [say that] the Warsaw appeals court in general is an Augean stable,” wrote Chłopik, according to screenshots of the alleged email.

“Such questions can be asked of PiS [the ruling Law and Justice party] politicians who will be in the studio tomorrow,” he continued. “Michał Dworczyk and I need to know who is going and then we will prepare them accordingly.”

The email then presented ideas from a “meeting of several eminent people” on how to attack the judges and the appeals court. It suggested mentioning how the same court had acquitted an opposition MP of taking bribes and how the chair of its adjudicating panel had “protected criminals and swindlers”.

Subsequently, coverage on TVP’s news broadcasts – which are used as a propaganda mouthpiece by the government – cited many of the examples suggested in Chłopik’s purported email.

In response to today’s leak, Olechowski tweeted that he is “not familiar with any such email”. He suggested that “either it went to spam or it’s simply a fake”.

Many commentators, however, argued that the email simply confirmed how public media are “dogs on the government’s leash”, in the words of Tomasz Lis, editor of the liberal Newsweek Polska.

Public broadcasters in Poland have always been under the influence of whichever parties are in government. But since PiS came to power in 2015, it has politicised state media to an unprecedented extent, using them to promote the government’s agenda and attack its opponents.

Another 2018 email leaked this week purports to be from a secretary in Morawiecki’s chancellery, Andrzej Pawluszek. It came in response to remarks by Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman, who condemned Poland for passing legislation that he claimed “glorified Nazi collaborators”

Pawluszek wrote to Morawiecki, Dworczyk and Piotr Wilczek, then the Polish ambassador in Washington, according to leaked screenshots of email attributed to him (but whose authenticity, like the other leaks, has been neither confirmed nor denied, while Pawluszek has not publicly commented).

He suggested that Polish organisations in the US should be encouraged to “officially criticise” Khanna. In the “long term…we should try to politically eliminate Rep. Khanna”, added Pawluszek, according to the leak.

This could be done through Polish groups “supporting Ro Khanna’s Republican competitors”, including “financially”. The email suggests finding a “trusted person”, such as the Polish consul in Los Angeles, “to prepare an analysis of Rep Khan’s activity, his competitors, the electoral district itself, allies and opponents”.

Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.