After Romanian presidential elections were canceled under incredible circumstances, Polish MP Janusz Cieszyński says he has gained access to a classified report on Romanian elections that call into question claims that foreign interference played a role in influencing the elections.
“I am disclosing classified documents on invalidated elections in Romania,” announced Cieszyński, who belongs to the Law and Justice (PiS) party and formerly served as the minister of digital affairs.
For those unfamiliar with the background, the Romanian Constitutional Court, despite the lack of proven fraud, ultimately invalidated presidential elections last year. The establishment candidate from the Social Democratic Party, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, did not make it to the second round. The highest result was obtained by the relatively unknown right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu, who conducted an effective campaign in social media, especially on TikTok.
NEW: 🇷🇴 Tens of thousands of Romanian patriots descend on Bucharest to protest the Constitutional Court's decision to annul the first round of last year's presidential election won by nationalist independent candidate Călin Georgescu.
Georgescu's unexpected victory led to… pic.twitter.com/dTr71Mikfx
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) January 12, 2025
Contrary to polls, which gave Georgescu between 4 and 10 percent of support, he won the first round of the presidential elections in Romania with a result of 23 percent. Second place was taken by Elenie Lasconi, the president of the center-right Union for the Salvation of Romania (USR).
It was announced that Georgescu’s victory was the result of Russian influence, which operated through the TikTok platform.
PiS MP Janusz Cieszyński revealed TikTok’s response to the European Commission’s questions regarding the Romanian presidential elections, according to a report from Polish outlet Do Rzeczy.
“As part of my parliamentary work, I have accessed confidential documents containing TikTok’s response to the European Commission’s questions on this matter,” writes Cieszyński
Cieszyński summed up the conclusions drawn from the correspondence.
NEW: 🇷🇴‼️ Romania's constitutional court has annulled the first round of its presidential election which saw right-wing NATO-skeptic Calin Georgescu win the most votes.
A re-run of the poll has been ordered.
The court claimed there were concerns over the legality of the process… pic.twitter.com/TPYn02N7Yg
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 6, 2024
“The declassified report by the Romanian services is largely an extract from slides that the Romanian equivalent of the Office of Electronic Communications received from TikTok. After the elections, TikTok identified a Telegram channel followed by 3,800 people on which almost 2,000 campaign materials of Calin Georgescu were published for retweeting on TikTok, but also on other platforms (these are not covered by the European Commission’s investigation). The Georgescu campaign hashtag, which was encouraged to be used, appeared on 1,183 accounts (there are about 10 million TikTok users in Romania), of which 157 were registered after the creation of the Telegram channel. Seventy-six of these accounts were identified as being created as strictly pro-Georgescu. In response to a signal that users were being encouraged to post specific emojis connected to Georgescu’s name, 83 such accounts were found, which posted a total of 2,912 comments. 25 of these accounts were identified as being created as strictly pro-Georgescu,” the report read.
🇷🇴🚨 Romania's election is this Sunday. This is why liberal establishment forces are freaking out about frontrunner Calin Georgescu:
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🇭🇺 Says he agrees with Viktor Orbán's pro-peace stance
👫… pic.twitter.com/XShtUwxZjg
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 5, 2024
“It was further indicated that “the user with the nickname Bogpr (TikTok determined based on verification data that it was Bogdan Peschir, who has been detained by Romanian services) transferred a total of $381,000 to 131 influencers. Of these accounts: In response, these users changed their profile photo to a photo of Georgescu. One changed their profile photo to the logo of the Romanian party AUR (Georgescu used to be a member of AUR, but left); Twenty-five posted comments about Georgescu; and nine accounts that changed their profile photo received a total of $132,000.”
“Romanian services indicated that the Telegram channel also encouraged the promotion of the hashtag #diaspora. This is related to the fact that over 5 million Romanians live outside the country, so their voice is important for the election result. As part of its own policy, TikTok removed several hundred videos that, according to the platform’s policy, constituted disinformation. This concerns content suggesting that in the event of Georgescu’s defeat, his supporters will start protesting and suggesting election fraud. The transfer of funds took place through a system of rewards given to users who hosted live broadcasts. The rewards can then be exchanged for money. Transferring money in this way may be considered illegal under Romanian law on the financing of election campaigns. The limit on the expenditure of the electoral committee is over PLN 80 million, which means that the amount in question is approximately 1.5% of the candidate’s allowable expenditure,” Janusz Cieszyński enumerates.
The PiS MP points out that “the only difference between the conclusions of TikTok and the Romanian services is that, according to TikTok, there is not enough evidence that we were dealing with a secret influence operation.”
In short, while there appears to have been an influence operation, there were relatively small sums of money involved and there is so far no evidence Russia or any other foreign country was behind the operation.
“Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater”
The politician further emphasizes that, as the recent report of the Venice Commission shows, “no evidence has been revealed that we were dealing with a foreign influence operation.”
“Secondly, it seems that someone wants to kill another bird and frame TikTok. Similar activities (sharing pro-Georgescu content) were carried out on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, but there is no news of their participation. Thirdly, while appreciating the MC’s activities in the area of election protection, we must be very careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Everything indicates that even if some networks of accounts appeared around the elections in Romania, they were not large and there has been no evidence presented to date confirming their Russian roots,” said the former minister.