The director-general of Brazil's Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, has told the president of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Justice Edson Fachin, that the force did not monitor Justice André Mendonça or the attorney general of the Union, Jorge Messias, who is named by Metrópoles. The filing was delivered on Friday afternoon (11), within the 48-hour deadline set by Fachin, who will now decide whether the officer keeps his post at the head of the police.

"There was, absolutely, no illegal monitoring of a Justice of this STF and none of the Attorney General of the Union. The documents challenged by the ruling issued in Pet 16662 did not come from surveillance actions, clandestine data collection or any invasive measure," Rodrigues wrote, in a passage quoted by G1.

In the filing, Rodrigues defended the intelligence reports challenged in Pet 16662, the court case in which the standoff runs. He said the papers were sent to Justice Alexandre de Moraes in compliance with a judicial order, and that calling them apocryphal is a mistake: they were produced by fully identifiable units and duly registered in the police's system, as Mendonça's own decision acknowledged. The absence of the analyst's name, he argued, follows the duty to protect intelligence professionals set by Decree 8.793/2016.

Timeline of the standoff

• Tuesday (8): Mendonça orders the precautionary removal of Rodrigues and of the Federal Police intelligence director, Leandro Almada, and the opening of criminal and administrative investigations into the reports. He asks the court's Second Chamber to review the order in a virtual session; a majority of three votes forms to keep the removals, but the vote is interrupted when Justice Gilmar Mendes asks for more time, leaving it unfinished.
• Wednesday (9): Justice Flávio Dino, ruling on a request by Rodrigues, reinstates the two officers. Dino held that Partido Novo, the party behind the original request, had no standing to seek criminal precautionary measures, and that the removal could harm ongoing inquiries, including the investigation into "Dark Horse", a biopic of former president Jair Bolsonaro that Dino oversees.
• Wednesday (9), late afternoon: Fachin suspends both decisions, cites a "conflict of judicial positions" and sends the standoff to the full court. He gives Rodrigues 48 hours to submit information on his continuation as director-general.

To justify the removal, Mendonça described the reports as technically weak, anonymous and incompatible with intelligence work, and spoke of "arapongagem institucional", a Brazilian term for the illegal snooping of authorities. He wrote that there were signs the police's intelligence structure had been misused to monitor STF justices and other authorities, and that keeping Rodrigues in command could allow interference with the investigations, early access to operations and influence over witnesses or evidence. The removal is precautionary: no one has been convicted.

"An interpretation based on that mistaken premise would make intelligence work itself unfeasible, since the agency's analysis of the institutional circumstances affecting its own investigations cannot be described as surveillance," Rodrigues replied, adding that there was no intrusion into the privacy or the official duties of the authorities involved.

With the response filed before the deadline expired at around 6 p.m., the case now sits with Fachin. Under article 33, sole paragraph, of the LOMAN, the Brazilian law that governs the judiciary, the court president will assess whether Rodrigues stays on as director-general. The clash between Mendonça and Dino goes to the full bench, and the Second Chamber's vote remains suspended after Mendes's request. No dates have been announced for any of these steps.