Calin Georgescu, a far-right populist who previously won the first round of Romania’s presidential election that was later annulled, was detained for questioning by leading prosecutors on Wednesday.

His team announced on Facebook that Georgescu was stopped while driving to submit his new presidential candidacy and “taken in for questioning at the General Prosecutor’s Office.”

According to Reuters, prosecutors stated that authorities searched 47 locations linked to Georgescu, including homes and associations. The allegations include “false statements regarding the sources of financing” for his campaign, illegal weapon possession, and forming an organization “with a fascist, racist or xenophobic” nature. Earlier in the month, authorities also searched the home of Georgescu’s campaign manager.

Georgescu claimed on Facebook that authorities are trying to “invent evidence to justify the theft of the elections and to block my new candidacy.” He urged supporters to protest in Bucharest on Saturday.

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu stated on X, “The judiciary is independent & the law must be applied regardless of persons.”

Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur who has worked with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, commented on the situation.

“They just arrested the person who won the most votes in the Romanian presidential election. This is messed up,” Musk wrote.

Musk has previously criticized Judge Marian Enache, the head of Romania’s top court, calling him a “tyrant.” Enache had voted to annul the election.

Romania’s Constitutional Court made the unusual decision to cancel the election two days before the December 8 runoff, following Georgescu’s first-round victory. The Associated Press reported that he had polled in single digits and declared no campaign spending. Allegations of Russian interference and electoral violations quickly surfaced. Following the election’s annulment, prosecutors began investigating alleged campaign funding fraud, as well as alleged antisemitism and hate speech.

The Trump administration has criticized Romania for canceling last year’s presidential election, with claiming that the court’s decision was based on “flimsy suspicions” and “enormous pressure” from Romania’s neighbors.

At the , Vance stated that his primary concern regarding Europe was not external threats like Russia or China.

“What I worry about is the threat from within – the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America,” Vance said. “Now, I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.”

“Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears,” he said. “For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But 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 stated in December, “Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.”

“The argument was that had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d asked my European friends to have some perspective,” Vance said. “You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

Vance cautioned European leaders against seeking a “democratic mandate” by “censoring your opponents or putting them in jail” or by “disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.”

“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,” Vance said.

Vance also criticized Romania’s top court at the over the weekend.

“You don’t have shared values if you cancel elections because you don’t like the result – and that happened in Romania – if you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up,” Vance said. “So let’s have shared values. Let’s defend democracy. Let’s have free expression, not just in the United States, but all over the Western world. That is the path to strong alliances in Europe.”

Thousands of protesters rallied in Bucharest on Saturday to support Georgescu, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing and maintained that the election was “canceled illegally and unconstitutionally.”

The first round of the re-run election is scheduled for May 4, with a runoff on May 18 if no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote. Georgescu’s eligibility to participate remains uncertain.

Georgescu, a vocal critic of NATO and Western support for Ukraine, has previously drawn criticism for describing Romanian fascist and nationalist figures from the 1930s and 1940s as national heroes, according to the AP.

He has also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a man who loves his country” and referred to Ukraine as “an invented state.”

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