Polish MEP Grzegorz Braun is angling to extend his current trial regarding, among other things, the extinguishing of Hanukkah candles, as a future run in national elections is at stake.
The trial of MEP Grzegorz Braun began in December 2025 with the politician facing seven counts. The first charge concerns an incident at the National Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw, where Braun allegedly violated the inviolability of Professor Łukasz Szumowski, who was then the director of the institute and the former Minister of Health.
Another charge involves destroying property and throwing a Christmas tree into the trash at a Krakow court because it featured baubles supporting sexual minorities, the EU, and Ukraine.
Braun is also accused of destroying property at the German Historical Institute, where he disrupted a Holocaust lecture by Professor Jan Grabowski by destroying a wireless microphone and a lectern. For this incident, Braun was additionally charged with disturbing the peace of the home.
The final two allegations involve extinguishing Hanukkah candles in the Sejm in December 2023. The prosecutor’s office states that the MEP insulted a group of people because of their religious affiliation and “violated the inviolability of Magdalena Gudzińska-Adamczyk, who tried to prevent the MP’s actions.”
Braun regularly attends hearings before the District Court for Warsaw Praga-Południe alongside supporters and politicians from the Confederation of the Polish Crown. The party leader’s speeches are broadcast online, where they achieve considerable popularity.
According to Rzeczpospolita, “Our conversations with people close to Braun indicate that the leader of the Confederation of the Polish Crown fears that a conviction will simply thwart his political plans. The point is that, according to the Constitution, a person sentenced by a final judgment to imprisonment for an intentional crime prosecuted at the public prosecutor’s office cannot run for the Sejm. And the ban applies even if sentenced to a suspended prison sentence – and Braun will most likely see such a sentence.”
Political analyst Łukasz Pawłowski, president of the National Research Group, notes that the result of the Confederation of the Polish Crown would certainly have been better if Braun had been on the list than if he had not been. He adds that the 100,000 to 150,000 votes potentially collected by Braun could have influenced the outcome of the entire list, concluding that “Braun is happy with trials, but not with convictions.”
Regarding how Braun’s defense is fighting the court, Rzeczpospolita reports that Braun wants to prolong the trial. A recent example involves the prosecutor’s office refusing to question 11 of approximately 70 witnesses.
The prosecutor argued in court that these individuals were standing in the back rows at Professor Grabowski’s lecture or were sitting in Professor Szumowski’s office with their backs to the entrance when Braun burst in, meaning their accounts are not extensive and are mostly secondary.
In court, Grzegorz Braun argued against this and opted for the witnesses to be questioned, stating, “This is fraud! And I will treat the further reduction in the number of witnesses as a clear, outrageous violation of my right to defense.”
According to the newspaper, the defense strategy of the leader of the Confederation of the Polish Crown was also made evident when he began complaining that the accumulation of hearings forced him to spend a significant part of the year in the courtroom.
When the judge proposed to refrain from directly questioning some of the witnesses and to instead disclose their testimonies without reading them, Braun’s defense called the move unfair. In response, the defense filed a motion to exclude the prosecutor accusing Braun, charging him with bias and the persecution of members of the Confederation of the Polish Crown.
In many polls, Braun scores between 8 and 10 percent of the vote. If he scores this actual figure on election day, he could potentially play kingmaker for a future Polish government.
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