Since March 13, a series of reports published by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo has been shaking up the office of Supreme Federal Court (STF) justice Alexandre de Moraes, formed by a team of auxiliary, police officers, and experts on standby — and Brazil only learned of their existence because of what they were secretly saying in a WhatsApp group. The newspaper gained legal access to a package of revealing conversations about an assembly line of reports — completely outside the legal procedure — to persecute “Bolsonarists.”
The Court’s formal response published by the newspaper was: “The procedures were official and regular.” Later, Moraes himself repeated the phrase in the STF plenary: “All procedures were official and regular.” But that’s not quite right: legal procedures were disregarded.
The facts: Folha de S.Paulo reports that Moraes’ offices in the Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) have become mixed up – although they are independent courts, it is impossible to understand where one ends and the other begins. In these offices, dossiers were prepared against individuals and legal entities that did not support Lula’s return to office. As the justice was the president of the TSE and, at the same time, headed a dozen inquiries in the STF, he didn’t need to “self-officiate.” Moraes himself used this expression – “self-officiate” – in a statement on March 14. What does this mean? This means that Moraes owed only himself explanations about the progress of investigations. He accumulated – in two courts supposed to be independent from each other – the position of investigator, judge, and victim (once the original inquiry was opened in 2019 to punish those who criticize the Supreme Court itself). He chose his targets and determined the sanctions without consulting anyone else.
“The messages obtained by the report show an exchange flow alien to the formalities required in strategic communication between Moraes’ office in the STF and the TSE body responsible for combating disinformation,” says the Folha de S.Paulo editorial on August 15. “The image of a judge who, through informal orders, chooses the targets that will later be hit by his pen conflicts with the classic canon of civil liberties.”
Before discussing the content of what was secretly plotted by Moraes’ assistants, it’s important to emphasize that the mess is even more serious as, according to Folha de S.Paulo, there was no hacking – as in the so-called “Car Wash Leaks,” which helped implode the Car Wash operation’s work in the Supreme Court. The source’s confidentiality is guaranteed by the Constitution. In other words, this time, Moraes will not be able to order the Federal Police to arrest whoever provided the information. The texts are signed by reporters Fábio Serapião and Glenn Greenwald – the same Glenn from the “Car Wash Leaks.” The newspaper announced that it will publish a series of reports since it is still analyzing six gigabytes of data.
Appearing in the conversations are Airton Vieira, instructor judge at the STF and the justice’s main advisor; Marco Antônio Vargas, auxiliary judge at the TSE; Eduardo Tagliaferro, cyber-crime expert investigating “disinformation”; and civil police officer Wellington Macedo, stationed in the office.
It came as no surprise that the first member of the Judiciary to come to Moraes’ defense was Flávio Dino, a historic militant of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), “a communist who ascended to the Supreme Court,” according to president Lula da Silva. Dino reinforced that justices should have police power. “I confess that I feel very impacted by this questioning where the Superior Electoral Court exercises police power, orders reports, these reports are pointed to existing records, and this is seen as a violation of procedure,” he stated. Police power? Is this in the Constitution? Indeed, in the extinct Soviet Union or in Venezuela and Cuba, this would be the usual procedure.
Out of esprit de corps, other justices, such as the dean of the STF, Gilmar Mendes, and the Court’s president, Luís Roberto Barroso spoke out. Their speeches were read in plenary, but there are doubts whether this safe-conduct for Moraes has an expiration date. As GloboNews journalists, who openly claim to have access to the justices, said on March 15, there is a climate of apprehension and strain in the Court about what else might still emerge.
There are already examples of unequivocal illegality. In a conversation with police officer Wellington Macedo, who works under Moraes’ orders, cyber-crime expert Eduardo Tagliaferro says he had informal help from a São Paulo civil police officer, “highly trusted” by him, to gain clandestine access to São Paulo government data. They were talking about the justice’s security.
At one point, the participants themselves in these conversations published by Folha showed concern about what they were doing. Instructor judge Airton Vieira says: “Formally, if someone questions it, it will look very blatant, let’s say. ‘How does a Supreme Court instructor judge send a request to someone stationed at the TSE, and that very person, without questioning, obeys and sends a report,’ you understand? It would look bad.”
Censoring Oeste
In the first conversations disclosed, there is a recommendation to track social networks, looking for anything that resembles fake news, offenses to STF/TSE justices, “for fining purposes.” The list of enemies in Congress were deputies from the Liberal Party (PL) Eduardo Bolsonaro (SP), Bia Kicis (DF), Carla Zambelli (SP), Major Vitor Hugo (GO), Daniel Silveira, Marco Feliciano (SP), Junio Amaral (MG), Filipe Barros (PR), and, from the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), Otoni de Paula (RJ). At the end of one of the messages uncovered, Moraes’ assistant warns: “The justice is in quite a hurry.”
There was also an attempt to muzzle Oeste magazine and its journalists right after Lula’s electoral victory. In one of the dialogues, auxiliary judge Airton Vieira orders expert Eduardo Tagliaferro to “ list all these coup-mongering magazines to demonetize them on social media.” It was precisely in this conversation that the use of the Judiciary to financially asphyxiate those who disagreed with the formation of the STF-PT (Workers’Party) consortium — became more explicit.
On December 6, 2022, Judge Airton Vieira sends expert Tagliaferro a post from X/Twitter. It’s a message from jurist Ives Gandra Martins, in which he merely says he’s an admirer of Oeste magazine. “Unless I’m mistaken, I’ve already done this magazine. But I’ll look, yes,” replies the expert, along with another link, with an article titled A Religião do Ódio (“The Hate Religion”), signed by J. R. Guzzo (see the box below).
A revista Oeste traz as informações mais relevantes do Brasil e do mundo. Jornalismo com liberdade, direto ao ponto. Assine a Oeste.
— Revista Oeste (@revistaoeste) October 8, 2021
Vieira reinforces the order: “This one (Oeste) and others of the same sort.” The assistant responds: “Whew, there won’t be any internet [news magazines] left.” The dialogue ends with an lol emoji. The duo of investigators seems to be having fun. It’s worth recalling that the use of emojis has already been considered very serious during elections: eight businessmen had their bank accounts frozen and their social media taken down as punishment for that.
The next day, on December 7, 2022, however, the expert frustrates the judge’s plan. Tagliaferro states that he found just “journalistic publications,” which “weren’t saying anything” and asked what, then, he should include in his report; to which the judge retorted: “Use your creativity… lol.” And continued: “Find some speech or harsher opinion and… The justice thinks that it’s getting out of line, based on what he sent.” The expert concludes: “I’ll find a way, lol.”
Oeste spent 15 months without monetization of its YouTube channel, where it maintains daily broadcasts and a journalistic programming schedule. The blocking notice was sent by Google in January 2023, therefore a month after this exchange of messages between Moraes’ assistants. Now, the siege commissioned by the office against the magazine is documented.
The Beginning of the End
The exposure of Moraes’ office provoked a reaction from traditional press newsrooms, which until then approved of the hunt for “Bolsonarism,” a kind of current times villain, also known as the “extreme right.” Despite the juggling of some commentators who support the Lula-STF administration, the subject ended up, for example, in the opening of Jornal Nacional, on TV Globo, and in the editorials of [the newspapers] Folha and O Estado de S.Paulo. There was no longer any way to sweep it under the rug.
“The justice’s orders to the TSE expose the capricious attitude that has been naturalized in the STF in the name of defending democracy. The endless and secret inquiries need to be closed,” published Estadão. “Besides being secret and endless, the inquiries are tentacular, and have already been used for purposes as outrageous as censorship.”
The fact is that the reports on the justice’s former bravery has moved to a different newspaper column and has come to be seen as abuse of authority. In recent months, dozens of criticisms of the perpetual inquiries have been published, and more people have understood that they are degenerating into a legal quagmire with no way out.
Lula’s minister of Defense, José Múcio Monteiro, from the Chamber of Deputies, was one of the first to say that the tumult of January 8, 2023, had nothing to do with an attempted coup d’état. Múcio pointed the obvious: just look at a photograph and it’s clear that these are scenes of vandalism, and instead of an Army tank, there was a hot dog cart. This is not an attempted coup. In fact, recently, the left invaded and vandalized the Legislative Assembly of Paraná. Teachers’ unions did the same in São Paulo. No court spoke of a “violent attack on the Democratic Rule of Law.”
Múcio and a series of renowned jurists have also been saying, since last year, that the frustrated crowd in Brasília could never have been arrested and sentenced to 14 or 17 years in prison — even more so by justices who openly advocate for decarceration, the legalization of drugs and abortion, precisely with the argument of reducing the sentence time of the convicted. This year, justices Luís Roberto Barroso and André Mendonça have already tried to demonstrate to Moraes that his punishment criteria go against the sentence guidelines he himself defends. But they were outvoted.
Another point: the Supreme Federal Court, as the last appellate court in the country, should not be the forum of judgment for a citizen devoid of the so-called “forum prerogative” – such as a parliamentary mandate. The January 8 case should have been overseen a first instance judge in the Federal District.
In summary, what various sectors of society have lost fear of saying is that Brazil cannot turn the page on January 8 solely because of the Supreme Federal Court. X/Twitter owner Elon Musk is one of them. Since April, the businessman has been saying that Moraes leads a crusade for censorship on social networks.
On August 11, former STF president Nelson Jobim gave a long interview to CNN. Jobim is a character that Brasília knows well. He was the minister of Justice and Defense, served a term in the STF, served as a federal deputy, worked with and against the PT. Only someone like him, who has made the complete round of the Three Powers Plaza, could send the following message to Alexandre de Moraes:
“Observe this inquiry carefully (No. 4.781, created in 2019), which never ends and keeps expanding. It was created by (justice Dias) Toffoli to combat people who were speaking ill of the Supreme Court,” he said in the interview.
Subsequently, Jobim speaks frankly about January 8, 2023: “It was a catharsis resulting from the frustration of the non-military intervention.” The interviewer still questions him: “What was the crime, then?” Jobim cites the invasion of the Bandeirantes Palace, seat of the São Paulo government, during Geraldo Alckmin’s administration. He remembers the case of hairdresser Débora Rodrigues, who took a lipstick from her purse during the confusion in Brasília and wrote “You lost, dumbass!” on the stone statue in front of the Supreme Court.
“It shouldn’t be the STF’s competence to judge that lady [who wrote with a lipstick on] the statue. This makes it all worse,” he said. “But it’s a ‘package,’ the rapporteur’s vote is the same. There are people sentenced to 17 years in prison. The court shouldn’t get involved in this political radicalization.”
What is the way forward? There is only one: the Constitution – in a democracy, one should never deviate from its content. The 1988 Charter determines that the Senate can deliberate on the removal of Alexandre de Moraes from office for misuse of his pen. At this time, it’s up to each voter to remember who they voted for and demand those politicians make such vote of confidence count. Whether this will be possible now, or only in a new composition of the plenary in 2027, cannot be predicted. There are already enough signatures from congresspeople for an impeachment process, but in the Senate, this also works by monocratic decision: in this case, by Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), president of the House. He doesn’t seem willing to move the process forward. However, those who know Brasília know that politics is as fleeting as clouds, as Magalhães Pinto (former senator and former governor of Minas Gerais) used to say. There are 6 gigabytes of conversations showing how Moraes’ team worked.
The Novo party presented a criminal notice to the Office of the Prosecutor General, but this will probably lead to nothing because Paulo Gonet, the bigwig of the Federal Prosecution Service, has already expressed solidarity with the justice, which constitutes a prior judgment.
The other mission to get Brazil out of this mess is not to use creativity, as requested by a justice’s assistant, to do politics in court. Legal procedures exist to ensure the lawfulness of the legal process and the integrity of evidence. The rule is simple: if there was a violation of the procedure, this implies nullity of the process – there is ample jurisprudence on this, including in the Supreme Court.
Hundreds of people treated as anonymous on that January 8 are locked in a cell, away from family, or attached to an ankle bracelet, which prevents them from resuming their lives. Clériston Pereira da Cunha, known as Clezão, died because Moraes’ office didn’t release him from the Penitentiary Complex of Papuda in time to see a doctor – he had health problems. There are still dozens of citizens in prison, some without formal charges, who beg for clemency from the Supreme Court to undergo treatment for severe diseases. None of them stole, killed, or trafficked drugs. It’s time to stop this cruelty.
For all this, Nelson Jobim’s interview was so symbolic. He seemed to be speaking on behalf of many people when he said: “Nobody is looking to the future.”
IVES GANDRA SOBRE A VAZA TOGA
— Dom (@domlancellotti) August 16, 2024
Não acredite em Fake News! pic.twitter.com/aQGcBrihpu
Leia também: “O anti-herói de Paris”
