Thirteen retired justices of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) signed an open letter released on Monday (Sept. 7) urging the court's president, Justice Edson Fachin, to call an urgent public session of the full bench to order an "immediate and rigorous" investigation into what they call the sharpest crisis in the court's history. Signatories include Celso de Mello, Rosa Weber, Joaquim Barbosa, Ellen Gracie and Nelson Jobim. BBC News Brasil obtained the document, which demands that the investigation proceed "under due process of law".
In the letter, the retired justices express "full confidence" in Fachin's "seriousness, discernment and firmness" and ask him to schedule, "with all urgency", a session of the full court held in public:
"The retired justices and former presidents signing below express full confidence in the seriousness, discernment and firmness of Your Excellency in leading this Supreme Court in the most acute crisis of its history, and the absolute conviction that Your Excellency will designate, with all urgency, a public session so that the full court may determine an immediate and rigorous investigation, under due process of law, into the gravest facts whose disclosure has been compromising the prestige and authority of this Court, the people's trust and even the stability of democratic institutions."
The letter is also signed by Néri da Silveira, Francisco Rezek, Sydney Sanches, Carlos Velloso, Ilmar Galvão, Cezar Peluso, Ayres Britto and Eros Grau. Justices who left the court more recently, among them Luís Roberto Barroso, Marco Aurélio Mello and Ricardo Lewandowski, who served as justice minister under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, did not sign. According to news portal g1, Barroso stayed out of the letter and has been seeking an internal way out of the crisis.
How the crisis began
According to g1, the trigger was a decision by Justice André Mendonça to release a Federal Police report produced within the Master case, the investigation surrounding Banco Master, which brought to light messages and contacts involving members of the court, government officials and former banker Daniel Vorcaro. Justice Alexandre de Moraes then asked Fachin to open an investigation into Mendonça over the release. Fachin took over the case files, said the court's response must be guided by due process and stated that no member of the judiciary stands above the Constitution.
On Tuesday (Sept. 8), Mendonça removed Andrei Rodrigues, the director-general of the Federal Police, and Leandro Almada, the head of the force's intelligence division, from their posts. When the case reached the court's Second Chamber, a majority endorsed the removals, with Justices Luiz Fux and Nunes Marques joining the rapporteur; Gilmar Mendes asked for a review period, a procedural step that suspends the vote, and Dias Toffoli did not take a position. Eleven Federal Police directors offered their resignations in support of Rodrigues, and the government's legal counsel, the Advocacia-Geral da União (AGU), asked Fachin to overturn the removals, arguing, according to g1, that Mendonça had encroached on powers that belong to the presidency.
'Corrosive shadow of suspicion'
Celso de Mello, who sat on the court from 1989 to 2020 and presided over it from 1997 to 1999, sent a separate statement to the press to expand on the letter. He said the collective text did not refer to "any specific episode" and wrote that "no authority is above the law, nor may it invoke the dignity of office to escape public scrutiny". In his view, eventual unlawful conduct, or ethically reproachable behavior, must not cast over the court "the corrosive shadow of suspicion": the STF, he wrote, "is greater than all and each of its Justices" and cannot be "converted into a protective shield for individual wrongdoing".
The blog of journalist Ana Flor, at g1, reported how the letter came together: retired justices began exchanging ideas in the middle of last week, and between Friday (Sept. 4) and Saturday (Sept. 5) a search reached former colleagues, some of them outside Brazil. Three signatories told the blog they were "extremely" worried about the damage the disclosures and the court's internal fights were causing to the institution's credibility. The agreed demands include an open plenary session, to prevent further closed-door meetings such as the one that, according to g1, shelved Federal Police findings concerning Justice Dias Toffoli, and a broad investigation through a formal police inquiry. One signatory acknowledged concern about the succession of the STF presidency and the institutional risk of the next term going to Alexandre de Moraes before the evidence is examined.
As of Tuesday night, Fachin had not scheduled the public session requested by the retired justices, and two requests remained pending before him: the AGU's bid to reinstate the Federal Police leadership and Moraes's request to investigate Mendonça. According to g1, a wing of the court argues that the Moraes-Mendonça conflict should be examined only after October's presidential election, and no date had been set for a plenary session.