The president of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF), Edson Fachin, is weighing whether to take the Master and INSS investigations away from Justice André Mendonça and keep them himself. The aim is to contain the crisis that has engulfed the court, according to Folha de S.Paulo. Fachin gathered his closest aides on Sunday (6) to map how to handle the confrontation between Mendonça and Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
The debate began before Mendonça's order on Tuesday (8) removing Andrei Rodrigues as head of the Federal Police. The case reached the court's Second Chamber, where a majority formed to uphold the removal, but the session was suspended after Justice Gilmar Mendes asked for more time to review the case.
According to Folha, stripping Mendonça of the cases is also the play of the STF wing that backs Moraes. That group wants Fachin to pull the rapporteur while any doubt remains about the justice's methods. Interlocutors of the president see the move as a way to cool tempers on both sides of the dispute and reduce attacks between the factions.
Fachin already moved last week. He removed from the fake news inquiry a request by Moraes to open an investigation of Mendonça for abuse of authority, administrative misconduct and a crime of responsibility. On Friday (4), at the Planalto Palace, he defended ending the inquiry, opened in 2019 and in Moraes's hands ever since, and adopting a code of ethics for the court.
"There will be no haste, but there will also be no omission... The institutional response will be firm, proportional and rigorous."
What comes next
Fachin has not decided whether to pull the cases from Mendonça. Thirteen retired justices and former STF presidents, including Celso de Mello, Rosa Weber and Joaquim Barbosa, asked in a letter for an urgent public plenary session to order an "immediate and rigorous investigation" into the facts damaging the court's authority, BBC News Brasil reported.
The Second Chamber vote on the removal of Andrei Rodrigues resumes once Gilmar Mendes presents his vote. The Attorney General's Office (AGU), the federal government's legal counsel, said it will appeal Mendonça's decision on the grounds that it invades the president's exclusive power to appoint and dismiss the head of the Federal Police, according to news outlet G1.