Police in riot gear at Poland's top court, its chief 'suspended' the same hour, the president turning his plane around: critics call it Tusk's coup

Friday evening in Warsaw, riot police poured onto the grounds of Poland's Constitutional Tribunal, the country's highest constitutional court. Around the same time, a notice on the court's own website announced that its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and vice president, Bartłomiej Sochański, had been suspended for a month. The court's official X account answered that its website had been "unlawfully taken over," that Święczkowski is still president, and that everyone involved is "committing the crime of a coup d'état."

Police say they were called in by Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, who claims to be running the court and warned of "threats to the lives and health" of judges and staff, and by Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek, who the same day sent the court requests to lift Święczkowski's immunity so he can be prosecuted. Police say they secured the grounds but never entered the building and are not interfering with the court. Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted: "Restoring the rule of law is our duty… There is no other way."

The other side sees it very differently. Republika TV's Michał Rachoń (@michalrachon) filmed the scene live and posted that the court had been "taken over by police force. Donald Tusk's coup d'état taking place right now"; his video, embedded above, passed 138,000 views within hours. PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński called it an "attack on the Constitutional Tribunal" and warned Poland is becoming a police state, Supreme Court First President Zbigniew Kapiński called it unprecedented, and President Karol Nawrocki turned his plane back mid-flight to Senegal: "At a moment like this the President must be in Poland." Święczkowski, standing outside, called the people who suspended him "usurpers."