“Călin Georgescu was going to file his new candidacy for the Presidency. About 30 minutes ago, the system stopped him in traffic and he was pulled over for questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office! Where is democracy, where are the partners who must defend democracy?” the statement read.
According to the Romanian news outlet Digi24, authorities issued an arrest warrant for Georgescu, with police conducting searches on the premises of individuals close to him, including mercenary leader Horatiu Potra and Georgescu’s personal bodyguard.
Antena 3 CNN reported that investigators suspect the financing behind Georgescu’s election campaign, a case that has now drawn in at least 27 people alleged of crimes including subverting Romania’s constitutional order, incitement, and providing false statements about campaign funding. The official prosecutor’s statement notably did not name Georgescu or his aides directly.
Georgescu has gone on record saying the entire operation was an effort to block his return to the presidential race.
Romania has been in political turmoil since late last year, when Georgescu, a NATO skeptic who is frequently categorized as far-right despite his claim that he is not, won the first round of the presidential election and was set to face reformist candidate Elena Lasconi in a runoff. However, the Constitutional Court nullified the results, citing allegations of Russian interference.
The court’s ruling was met with opposition from both ends of the political spectrum. Far-right nationalists and Lasconi’s liberal reformist USR party both condemned the move as a desperate attempt by Romania’s deeply entrenched establishment—led by the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the center-right National Liberal Party (PNL)—to maintain control through judicial maneuvering.
Earlier this month, Romania’s outgoing liberal president, Klaus Iohannis, resigned in the wake of the electoral fallout, declaring in his final speech: “I have never violated the Constitution. From here, everyone loses, no one wins.”
Top conservatives in the U.S. government have taken note of Romania’s unfolding crisis, warning that it could be part of a larger trend in Europe where elections are being manipulated under the guise of fighting so-called "misinformation." Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance criticized Romania’s highest court for invalidating the election.
“When we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard,” Vance said.
“To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, or God forbid vote a different way, or even worse, win an election,” he added.
