By late winter, it was becoming more clear that pro-Georgescu disinformation in Romania was also accompanied by concrete, if sometimes ill-conceived, plans aimed at overthrowing the government. On Feb. 28, prosecutors ordered the arrest of Horatiu Potra, a Romanian mercenary who ran a private army similar to the Wagner Group, the Russian state-funded military contractor. A raid on several dozen a properties, including an abandoned house said to be Potra’s, turned up grenades, high-powered weapons and gold ingots, and authorities accused him of conspiring to start a riot in Bucharest led by Georgescu’s supporters, styled, it seemed, in the model of America’s Jan. 6 insurrection. The riot never happened, but prosecutors said Potra and Georgescu met two weeks after the first-round vote at a horse ranch an hour north of Bucharest to draw up plans.
Six days later, Romanian authorities said they had uncovered a more lurid plot: a group of conspirators calling itself “Vlad the Impaler Command” — named after the brutal Romanian ruler who inspired the character Dracula — had “repeatedly contacted agents of a foreign power, located both on the territory of Romania and the Russian Federation,” to instigate the “removal of the current constitutional order.” They had detained six conspirators, including a 101-year-old retired Romanian general named Radu Theodoro, on charges of treason, and expelled two Russian diplomats. The Dracula plot appeared only to be in its planning stages, but the details that emerged in news reports were notably bold and ambitious: The group would spread disinformation online, infiltrate state structures, incite a mass rally (“minimum two million people”) that would culminate in a coup, “the removal of all employees from state institutions” and “the change of the country’s name, flag and anthem.”
It was hard to know how serious such machinations actually were. But Potra, for his part, was a mercenary with professional knowledge of how to overthrow a government, and his involvement signaled to Romanian authorities that Russian interference in Romanian politics was not limited to talk. “We saw a big, monstrous mechanism online, plus a violent organization ready to reach into the streets,” one top Romanian official told me. Potra had fled the country and couldn’t be arrested.
Georgescu, who seemed the next possible target for prosecutors, was now turning increasingly to MAGA media to defend himself. That month, he landed a big interview with Mario Nawfal, an Australian podcaster and cryptocurrency entrepreneur based in Dubai. Nawfal — who once landed a rare interview with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister — claims that his podcast is “the most popular show on X.” Beyond its immediate reach, it is regularly cited by Elon Musk, who at that moment was reaching the peak of his apparent influence within the White House.
Nawfal flew to Bucharest to interview Georgescu. “Deep down I want to address you as ‘Mr. President,’ because I think it’s the right thing to do,” Nawfal said. Soon, Musk was on the case as well — reposting Nawfal’s X posts on Romania. “The NGOs are trying to destroy democracy!” the billionaire wrote, reposting a message of Nawfal’s attacking, among other groups, the organization that tried to help TikTok combat disinformation in 2024. “This guy is a tyrant, not a judge,” Musk wrote on Feb. 20, in response to a picture, also posted by Nawfal, of the head of Romania’s Constitutional Court.
