President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took charge on Tuesday night (8) of an operation to contain the crisis at the top of Brazil's judiciary. According to Folha de S.Paulo, his aides concluded that an endless dispute inside the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the country's highest court, is seriously hurting his campaign for reelection this year, and Lula decided it is urgent to rebuild a majority able to isolate Justice André Mendonça, the rapporteur of the Master and INSS investigations.
On the president's instructions, Folha reports, cabinet ministers, justices seen as close to the Planalto, the seat of government, and lawmakers coordinated in recent hours a response to Mendonça's decision on Tuesday to remove Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues and intelligence director Leandro Almada. On Wednesday morning (9), Justice Flávio Dino ordered both reinstated. Interlocutors told the newspaper that many of the arguments in Dino's ruling reflect Lula's own views.
An offensive against the justice
The backroom diagnosis, according to the newspaper, is that attempts to negotiate the court's neutrality in this year's election through dialogue with Mendonça have failed. Jorge Messias, the head of the Attorney General's Office (AGU), the federal government's top legal counsel, had acted as a bridge to the justice. Allies convinced Lula that Mendonça, a former minister under Jair Bolsonaro, is working to damage his reelection bid and shield his main rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), the former president's son. Lula then authorized an offensive against the rapporteur.
People aware of the talks told Folha that the decision to have Andrei file a rehabilitation petition in an investigation handled by Dino came from Lula's negotiation with allies. The inquiry covers suspected irregularities in budget earmarks tied to "Dark Horse", a film about Jair Bolsonaro. Examining Andrei's petition on Wednesday, Dino wrote that hiring and firing the Federal Police chief is the exclusive power of the president and asked, in the ruling, whether "a party can be its own judge and anticipate value judgments about Federal Police reports that explicitly mention it".
The public attack
Lula also took his case public. In a post on X on Wednesday, he criticized "selective leaks" affecting the electoral race and called for an end to the secrecy around the Master case, which the Federal Police says involved artificially inflating the value of the now defunct Banco Master. "The Brazilian people need explanations and immediate measures to face the institutional crisis that has taken over the Judiciary", the president wrote, according to news outlet G1.
"It is urgent to fully lift the secrecy of the investigations into everyone involved in the Master case, whoever they are and no matter whom it hurts. Brazil needs to know the truth."
The crisis escalated after Mendonça released Federal Police reports exposing message exchanges between former banker Daniel Vorcaro, jailed in the Banco Master fraud scheme, and Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who asked Chief Justice Luiz Edson Fachin to open a probe into the rapporteur's conduct. The next move belongs to Fachin, according to G1: he canceled the court's plenary session on Wednesday, was expected to receive Moraes during the day, and set a deadline for the parties to weigh in on the intelligence reports before taking the matter to the full bench.