Poland’s deputy justice minister resigned on Tuesday after an investigative report accused him of using an internet troll to wage a smear campaign against judges opposed to the government’s judicial reforms.

The Onet news portal on Monday published a report alleging that Deputy Justice Minister Łukasz Piebiak “arranged and controlled” an online campaign against Judge Krystian Markiewicz, the head of Iustitia, a judicial organization critical of the government’s efforts to restructure the judicial system, as well as against other inconvenient judges.

The scandal brings attention back to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party's judicial reforms, which have been criticized as an attempt to put judges under tighter political control and have embroiled Poland in an ongoing dispute with the EU.

It also creates a potential problem for PiS ahead of the October 13 parliamentary election, coming just days after the speaker of parliament had to resign after being accused of abusing his right to travel by government jet.

Social media campaign

According to the Onet report, Piebiak operated and financed an online campaign by a woman called Emilia who allegedly sent over 2,000 letters and emails about Markiewicz to other judges as well as to pro-government right-wing media. The messages contained fabricated, semi-confirmed and gossipy details of the judge’s personal life. According to Onet, Emilia obtained Markiewicz’s personal address from Piebiak so she could send him one of the letters.

Piebiak also said he was a victim of politically motivated hate speech.

The campaign also attacked about 20 other judges using information supplied by Piebiak, who is a judge himself. After she succeeded in planting information about another judge in the state-controlled media, Piebiak congratulated Emilia for "such beautiful and widespread activities.”

The woman's attorney told Poland's TVN24 news channel that “Emilia definitely wasn’t the person who initiated this situation. All the instructions on where to go, which materials to use ... they came from the ministry … in large part also from the minister.”

The report prompted Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to demand an explanation from Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, Piebiak's boss (and Morawiecki's rival for the leadership of PiS when its current leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, decides to step down). Ziobro, a close associate of Piebiak, received the news about his deputy with "disapproval," a justice ministry spokesman told the Polish Press Agency, and demanded a resignation.

Piebiak quickly complied, saying in a statement that he was stepping down “in the spirit of responsibility for the success of the reforms I've been working on for four years.”

He also said he is a victim of politically motivated hate speech. “It’s not a coincidence that these lies show up directly before the general election. They’re meant to hit not me but the reforms. They’re tools in a political fight,” he told reporters, adding that he plans to sue Onet.

The issue is being investigated by Polish prosecutors — under Ziobro's control — as well as by the government's data protection authority.

The country's opposition parties have seized on the issue as proof that PiS should be turfed from power in October.

Kamila Gasiuk-Pihowicz, an MP with the Civic Platform party, tweeted that both Ziobro and Piebiak should be forced to resign. "Coordinating an effort to besmirch the names of judges by the leadership of whatever ministry would be a scandal and a cause for dismissal ... in any normal country."

Donald Tusk, the European Council president and a former Polish prime minister for the Civic Platform, tweeted in Polish he was correct in calling the PiS government "today's Bolsheviks."

Despite the frequent scandals, PiS is for now still far ahead of the opposition in the polls. A survey released last week found the ruling party with 44 percent support, while a coalition led by Civic Platform had only 27 percent.

"This will not be forgotten. In Poland one scandal doesn't overthrow the government but this is a series of scandals,” said Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist at Warsaw University. “The sum of these events will have an influence on the electoral campaign and maybe even on the electoral results."

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