The director-general of Brazil's Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, told the president of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Justice Edson Fachin, that a police report used to support a request to investigate Justice André Mendonça was sent to the court on orders from Justice Alexandre de Moraes. In a filing delivered on Friday (11), Rodrigues denied that the force had monitored or investigated his fellow justice.
According to the document, accessed by Folha de S.Paulo and CNN Brasil, the material was handed over to comply with a judicial order issued in the so-called fake news inquiry, which Moraes oversaw at the time. Rodrigues defended the "absolute lawfulness" of the reports and denied they involved "surveillance actions, clandestine data collection or any invasive measure". His lawyers described them as scenario analyses built from information officers already knew in the line of duty, not the "directed and continuous" tracking of any individual. The filing states that "there was absolutely no unlawful monitoring of a Minister of this STF or of the Attorney General of the Union".
"The police agency did not cause any disclosure of the classified material, nor did it send it outside the corporation on its own initiative, except, as stated, to comply with a judicial order issued by the STF," Rodrigues wrote.
Timeline
The standoff between the court and the police began on Tuesday (8), when Mendonça suspended Rodrigues and the police intelligence director, Leandro Almada, preventively and ordered the force's internal affairs office to examine how the reports were produced. The move responded to Moraes's use of the internal document to ask the court to investigate Mendonça for abuse of authority, administrative improbity and crimes of responsibility in his handling of the Banco Master and INSS cases, the latter a federal social security agency. Moraes alleges that Mendonça steered those investigations with "a breach of judicial impartiality and favoritism toward certain political groups". Mendonça, for his part, says the police produced reports on officials who can only be tried by the top court. Hours after the suspension, Justice Flávio Dino, in a separate case, ordered the two directors back to their posts. On Wednesday (9), Fachin suspended both rulings, spoke of an "irreconcilable conflict of judicial positions", gave Rodrigues 48 hours to provide information and Mendonça 72 hours to explain the removals.
In the filing, Rodrigues also challenged the basis of his own suspension. The measure had been requested by the party Novo, and his defense argues that a political party lacks standing to seek precautionary measures against an official, since such requests must come from prosecutors. Folha reports that police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, had already said the report was produced for internal use and sent to Moraes's office at his request. The fake news inquiry was later removed from Moraes's docket by Fachin.
The next step sits with the full court. Fachin has called an extraordinary session for Tuesday (15), when the justices are set to weigh the crisis between Moraes and Mendonça. On Friday the court president also ordered Mendonça to lift, within 24 hours, the secrecy over the investigations tied to Banco Master, except for material linked to ongoing operations. Fachin has yet to decide whether Rodrigues stays in charge of the Federal Police.