The wing of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) that backs Justice Alexandre de Moraes wants Chief Justice Edson Fachin to temporarily remove Justice André Mendonça from leading the investigations into Banco Master and the INSS, Brazil's national social security institute. The report was published by Folha de S.Paulo on Friday (Sept. 4).
The group's argument is institutional. In its view, as long as there is any doubt about Mendonça's conduct of the two cases, which Moraes has described as abuse of authority, the justice cannot keep authorizing judicial measures or accessing evidence in the inquiries.
People close to Mendonça push back. According to Folha, they defend the integrity of the investigations and of the justice's acts, and argue that closing the fake news inquiry, which Moraes oversees as its rapporteur, should also be on the table as a way to settle the feud inside the court.
How the crisis began
The removal demand is an offshoot of the confrontation opened on Thursday (Sept. 3), when Moraes asked Fachin to investigate Mendonça for abuse of authority, administrative improbity and crime of responsibility, the offense that can trigger impeachment. In the filing, according to the news site G1, Moraes wrote that Mendonça had "usurped the police authorities" in charge of the investigations, mishandled talks over a possible plea deal and steered the probe toward chosen targets for "personal and political reasons", among them Moraes himself and Senate President Davi Alcolumbre. In Moraes's reading, the Federal Police report shows measures taken by his colleague "with a flagrant loss of impartiality".
The request was lodged within the fake news inquiry two days after Mendonça, on Tuesday (Sept. 1), lifted the secrecy on a Federal Police report exposing messages and contacts between Moraes and former banker Daniel Vorcaro, the owner of Banco Master.
Fachin began to answer on Friday. He pulled the request out of the fake news inquiry, moved the case to the court's presidency and gave the Prosecutor General's Office (PGR) and Mendonça five days to respond, G1 reported. Folha adds that the chief justice opened the instruction phase of the process that will weigh whether the request is admissible, and that the lawfulness of Moraes's own filing will also be examined. On Thursday night, Fachin had already ordered Moraes, Mendonça, Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet and Federal Police Director General Andrei Rodrigues to provide information on the report linking Moraes and Vorcaro.
In public remarks, Fachin said the response to the crisis will be "firm, proportional and rigorous" and that "recent events" prove the merits of his administration's goals, among them closing the fake news inquiry and adopting a code of ethics. Once the responses are in, it falls to the chief justice to decide whether the case against Mendonça proceeds.