Exclusives

EXCLUSIVE: Police, Judges And ‘Coup’ Allegations: Poland’s Government Erupts Into Chaos

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The government of Poland is currently undergoing a constitutional crisis that prominent Polish legal figures called a coup during exclusive interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Riot police surrounded Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal on Friday as a bitter dispute over the court’s leadership erupted into accusations of a government-backed coup, prompting the country’s president to abandon an overseas trip and return to Warsaw, according to the Warsaw Metropolitan Police and the Polish presidency. The confrontation has intensified an ongoing power struggle between Poland’s liberal-centrist governing coalition and its conservative opposition, with both sides accusing each other of violating the country’s constitution.

The Constitutional Tribunal is Poland’s highest constitutional review body, responsible for determining whether laws and government actions comply with the country’s constitution, according to the Polish Constitution.

The crisis erupted after newly appointed Constitutional Tribunal Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska announced the suspension of Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice President Bartłomiej Sochański, assuming control of the institution amid a heavy police deployment, according to Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita.

“It is no more a political discussion or a legal discussion, as the police force has been implemented by the government to take over the building and the premises of the court and to install newly elected judges that were not sworn in by the president,” Jerzy Kwaśniewski, a Polish attorney and president of the conservative Ordo Iuris Institute, told the DCNF.

At the center of the confrontation is a disagreement over whether judges elected by Poland’s parliament can legally assume office without taking their oaths before the president.

Nawrocki refused to administer oaths to several judges elected by the parliamentary majority, prompting them to take oaths in parliament instead, according to the Polish government.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk maintains that the parliamentary appointees were legally elected and that the Tribunal’s existing leadership unlawfully prevented them from carrying out their duties.

Tusk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kwaśniewski described the confrontation as a “coup against the constitutional court,” arguing that the deployment of armed police crossed a legal boundary not seen since the imposition of martial law under Poland’s communist government in 1981.

Article 128 of Poland’s Criminal Code prohibits actions directly aimed at forcibly removing a constitutional state institution, carrying a potential prison sentence of three to 20 years, according to the Polish Criminal Code.

“So it’s not a crisis. It’s a crime. It’s a coup d’etat,” Judge Łukasz Piebiak, a former deputy justice minister and president of the Lawyers for Poland association, told the DCNF.

Piebiak said he personally witnessed police preventing the Tribunal’s existing leadership from accessing the institution.

“We have [the] constitutional court premises surrounded by hundreds of police forces, we have a situation where the president of the tribunal and deputy president of [the] tribunal are trying to access the building, and they are denied by the police officers,” Piebiak told the DCNF.

“I was [there] on Friday, and I am every day there. And I was one meter from the president of the tribunal, and I saw it, and many journalists saw it,” he added.

The police acknowledge deploying officers but deny conducting an operation inside the building.

Police were responding to requests from Poland’s prosecutor general and a Constitutional Tribunal judge warning of potential threats to personnel and public order, according to an official police statement.

Officers remained outside the building, and three demonstrators were arrested after crossing the Tribunal’s fence, police said.

The police operation nevertheless drew criticism from outside the conservative opposition.

The deployment and exclusion of the Tribunal’s president and vice president were unprecedented and raised serious concerns about compliance with the rule of law, Supreme Administrative Court President Jacek Chlebny said in an official statement.

The confrontation represents the latest chapter in a decade-long battle over Poland’s judiciary, stretching back to the conservative Law and Justice party’s rise to power in 2015.

Law and Justice, commonly known as PiS, governed Poland from 2015 until 2023, pursuing judicial reforms that its supporters defended as necessary to reform the courts but that European institutions challenged as threats to judicial independence, according to the European Court.

The conservative party lost control of the government following the 2023 parliamentary election, when Tusk assembled a coalition led by the liberal-centrist Civic Coalition, alongside the agrarian Polish People’s Party, centrist Poland 2050 and the social-democratic New Left, according to Polish Radio.

The coalition is frequently described as liberal because of the Civic Coalition’s support for the European Union, institutional and social reforms. However, its constituent parties range from the center-right to the political left, making the term an imperfect description of the entire government.

President Karol Nawrocki, meanwhile, is a national conservative who won the presidency in 2025 with PiS support, creating a divided executive between a conservative president and Tusk’s governing coalition.

“Both elected liberals to … govern the country and elected conservative president … to be a kind of mediator,” Piebiak told the DCNF, describing the political divide.

The government has a responsibility to restore judicial independence and protect judges against intimidation, Tusk argued in a public address on Saturday.

Kwaśniewski rejected the legal basis for suspending Święczkowski, arguing that procedures governing ordinary courts cannot simply be applied to the Constitutional Tribunal.

“There is no such procedure in the legal acts that regulate the functioning of the constitutional court,” Kwaśniewski told the DCNF.

“One of the persons elected by the parliament to the constitutional court, but not yet sworn in, took over the position of the president of the court and declared [the] previous president suspended, following the regulations of the law that concerns general courts, not the constitutional court,” Kwaśniewski added.

The dispute escalated further when Nawrocki abruptly turned his presidential aircraft around over Spain while traveling to Senegal on Friday, returning to Warsaw to address the confrontation, according to the Polish presidency.

Nawrocki subsequently accused the government of forcibly taking control of a constitutional institution and demanded the withdrawal of police from the Tribunal’s premises, according to an official presidential statement.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki blamed Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government for escalating the Constitutional Tribunal crisis during Tuesday’s National Security Council meeting, according to the president’s office.

The meeting had originally been scheduled to discuss national security issues, including the possibility of establishing a permanent American military base in Poland, according to the Polish presidency.

The stakes extend beyond control of the Tribunal building, as a new judicial majority could reconsider longstanding constitutional rulings concerning Poland’s sovereignty and the authority of European Union law, Kwaśniewski warned.

“The newly elected judges will reopen hundreds of cases already decided by the court, and that they will reshape the jurisprudence of the court in on some fundamental matters as supremacy of the of the constitutional Polish constitutional sovereignty above European law,” Kwaśniewski told the DCNF.

His prediction remains unverified, but the disagreement over the supremacy of European law has already produced significant litigation.

The European Court of Justice ruled in December 2025 that Poland had violated EU law after its Constitutional Tribunal rejected the supremacy of European legislation over national law, according to the court’s published judgment.

Piebiak went further, speculating that a reconstituted tribunal could eventually facilitate efforts to remove Nawrocki or overcome constitutional obstacles to adopting the euro.

“We can imagine that if Donald Tusk will use police forces or secret agencies to subordinate independent institutions to his will, like courts, like tribunals, like [the] central bank, like [the] election committee. There is a possibility that the president will use his prerogatives, and the army will intervene,” Piebiak told the DCNF.

“I don’t want, as a Pole, as a Polish patriot, as a Polish judge, I don’t want to see fighting army against police or something like that in Poland. But it is theoretically possible. So it will be a civil war,” he added.

Piebiak offered no evidence that the Polish military was preparing to intervene or that the government had developed plans to remove Nawrocki.

The institutional confrontation continued Tuesday when eight judges participated in a disputed general assembly that approved the tribunal’s proposed 2027 budget, according to Polish Radio and Radio ZET.

The president’s office challenged the legality of that meeting, arguing that only eight judges attended when 10 were required and that five participants had not taken their oaths before Nawrocki, according to a Nov. 4 presidential statement.

The presidential administration also announced plans to submit criminal complaints concerning the alleged unlawful seizure of a constitutional institution and an alleged assault on the president, according to the same statement.

Tusk has rejected the opposition’s accusations and offered to meet Nawrocki privately to reduce tensions, emphasizing the need for political stability amid security threats from Russia, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Despite the offer of negotiations, neither side has publicly accepted the other’s interpretation of who legitimately controls Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal.