Nawrocki enters the tribunal in the middle of the night, tells the rival judges they are not judges, and calls on the government's forces to leave

Poland's fight over its top court moved from paper orders to a doorway shortly before 1 a.m. on Saturday. President Karol Nawrocki, who had landed in Warsaw hours earlier after turning his plane back from Senegal, finished a meeting at the Presidential Palace at about 12:30 a.m. and went to the Constitutional Tribunal with Zbigniew Kapinski, the First President of the Supreme Court. At 12:50 a.m. the president's chief of cabinet, Pawel Szefernaker, announced on X that Nawrocki and Kapinski had entered the tribunal building.

At the door, the two camps met physically. Judge Maciej Berek published video on X of Nawrocki squeezing between people standing in the entrance, among them Anna Korwin-Piotrowska and Krystian Markiewicz, two of the judges the current parliament elected this year. The two sides then accused each other of using force. Berek wrote that the president had physically attacked Korwin-Piotrowska and the other judges, that she had offered him a meeting in safe and dignified conditions, and that Nawrocki chose physical confrontation instead. Presidential spokesman Rafal Leskiewicz answered that Berek had documented a crime of his own side: the people he called usurpers tried to block the president of Poland from entering and violated the president's inviolability. Presidential minister Marcin Przydacz wrote that Markiewicz and Korwin-Piotrowska tried to grab at the president.

Inside the building, Onet published video from a corridor. Korwin-Piotrowska told Nawrocki, "We are judges of the Constitutional Tribunal." Nawrocki answered her directly: "You are not judges of the Constitutional Tribunal." He spoke to Korwin-Piotrowska, Markiewicz and Berek. His chancellery chief, Zbigniew Bogucki, pointed at Slawomir Patyra and said he could see only one tribunal judge in the room. Bogucki told Korwin-Piotrowska, "You are carrying out a coup, I do not know whether you realise that," and said she had no legal basis to be in the building or to issue what he called her ridiculous orders. Korwin-Piotrowska answered that she is the one who leads the tribunal. Leskiewicz later posted a photograph from inside the building of Nawrocki with Kapinski, Bogucki, national security chief Bartosz Grodecki and suspended deputy president Bartlomiej Sochanski, the man police had kept out of his own court on Friday evening.

The prosecutors entered the story in the middle of the night. At 2:34 a.m. Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Zurek told PAP that prosecutor Andrzej Piaseczny was at the tribunal headquarters. PAP had asked Zurek what the prosecution service would do about the published videos and the claims that the president's inviolability had been violated. "Prosecutor Andrzej Piaseczny is already on site. Everyone who breaks the law will face a court," Zurek said.

Swieczkowski, the tribunal president suspended on Friday, tried again after 4 a.m. and police blocked him again. PAP reported numerous demonstrators outside chanting for officers to make a passage for the president of the tribunal, and police loudspeakers telling the crowd to stay calm and obey orders, and warning that officers would use direct coercion against anyone who did not. Sochanski left the building at about 4:48 a.m., judge Krystian Markiewicz told PAP, while Nawrocki and Bogucki were still inside. Nawrocki and Bogucki left shortly before 5 a.m., judge Maciej Taborowski told PAP. Taborowski said the judges remained in the building and would take further decisions during the day.

At about 5:10 a.m. Szefernaker read Nawrocki's statement to the demonstrators still outside the court. "Tonight the constitutional order of the Republic of Poland was violated and a constitutional body of the state was seized by force," the statement said. Nawrocki said he had consulted Kapinski, who also does not recognise the actions of the people he called usurpers of power in the tribunal as legal. He called for legal order to be restored and for the coercive forces the government sent to leave the tribunal grounds. He said he had enabled the legally serving deputy president, Bartlomiej Sochanski, to enter the tribunal. Citing a threat to Poland's internal security, he summoned representatives of the parliamentary parties to urgent consultations on Saturday, aimed at stabilising the political situation and restoring constitutional order, and he thanked the people standing outside the tribunal in defence of the constitution.

Friday set up the night. Korwin-Piotrowska suspended Swieczkowski and Sochanski for one month and took charge of the court herself, police deployed onto the tribunal grounds on written requests from Zurek and from her, three demonstrators were detained, and Zurek filed five motions to lift the two men's immunity. Korwin-Piotrowska has called a general assembly of the tribunal's judges for Tuesday, November 3. Saturday now has a second meeting on the calendar, the president's, and the two camps still disagree on the basic question the corridor video put in one sentence each: who in that building is a judge at all.