Justice Flávio Dino of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) asked on Tuesday (15) that a ruling on a Federal Police report about alleged messages between former banker Daniel Vorcaro and Justice Alexandre de Moraes be postponed to September 23 and decided together with a session already scheduled to examine allegations involving the conduct of Justice André Mendonça in the Master case, the sprawling investigation centered on Vorcaro's former bank. In a ponto de ordem, the Brazilian equivalent of a point of order, filed right after court president Edson Fachin read the report, Dino said the court's presidency mishandled the cases by gathering several reports in its own office.

Dino's central argument is that the court's internal rules give the president no power to "take over" a case assigned to another justice, a move known in Brazilian legal jargon as avocação. He said the matters should have been reassigned by lottery and that there was a "clear legal rupture" when Fachin pulled the cases from their original rapporteurs and began supervising them himself.

"Neither the Federal Constitution, nor any other legislation in force in the Brazilian legal system, provides for such a possibility," Dino wrote.

Dino asked the court to recognize the alleged irregularity and to have both matters, one concerning Moraes and the other concerning allegations against Mendonça, tried together by a rapporteur who is not the president. "The inquiry must reach everyone involved in the case, without political or ideological cuts, nor personal preferences," he wrote. He addressed the request to Gilmar Mendes, the dean of the court, its longest-serving justice, who Dino said is the president's legal substitute to decide the matter. Gilmar backed the point of order and said there was a political and electoral motive behind the request targeting Moraes; Mendonça, the case's rapporteur, replied that he was being "frivolous". The session was suspended and resumed at 2 p.m.

How the case got here

• Federal Police intelligence reports examined the conduct of the rapporteur for the Master and INSS cases and raised the suspicion of possible steering of the investigations. According to InfoMoney, the documents themselves stated they carried no probative value.
• Mendonça began questioning the origin and content of the reports, calling them apocryphal. In a filing to Fachin, Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues said the documents were produced regularly and handed over under an order Moraes had issued in the fake news inquiry.
• On September 8, Mendonça ordered the removal of Andrei Rodrigues and of the police's intelligence director, Leandro Almada. Fachin later suspended that removal, and also a decision by Dino that had reinstated the two officers, keeping Andrei in command of the force.
• Moraes began accusing Mendonça of trying to steer the Federal Police against him. On Tuesday he said he had witnesses to the alleged request for investigators to dig up material against him, and mentioned an attempt to include him in a plea-bargain deal.

The clash escalated on the bench. Interrupted by Mendonça, Moraes asked: "Should we call this witness? Should we?". The colleague shot back: "You cannot call whomever you want". Moraes also asked "who called the Federal Police and demanded that it put a colleague in the plea bargain", called the inquiry against him "fraudulent" and argued the matters must be judged together: "You cannot judge one thing without the other". Mendonça denies having run the investigations unlawfully. No justice is a defendant at this stage: Tuesday's session only decides whether there are grounds to open an investigation into Moraes.

When the session resumed at 2 p.m., the bench first had to rule on Dino's point of order: accept the postponement and merge both matters into the September 23 session, or reject the request and move to the vote on opening an investigation into Moraes. The September 23 session on Mendonça is already on the calendar set by the court's presidency. According to G1, justices Dias Toffoli and Kassio Nunes Marques are not taking part in Tuesday's judgment, the first after declaring himself biased and the second after declaring a legal impediment.