President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has received a series of appeals to speak publicly about the scandal linking former banker Daniel Vorcaro and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The pressure was reported on Wednesday (2) by columnist Mônica Bergamo of Folha de S.Paulo, one of Brazil's leading dailies. Inside the presidential palace, though, Lula is being advised to keep his distance and say nothing about the case, according to CNN Brasil.
The pressure grew on Tuesday (1), when Justice André Mendonça, the rapporteur for the Banco Master case at the STF, as Brazil's Supreme Court is known, lifted the seal on a Federal Police report documenting the ties between Moraes and Vorcaro, who controlled the now defunct Banco Master and is jailed in the scandal, according to Folha. The report contains messages attributed to exchanges between Vorcaro and a phone number linked to the justice, according to G1, the news portal of TV Globo.
Why silence is hard
The report does not directly implicate Lula in the facts under investigation. The problem, according to CNN political analyst Jussara Soares, is image: the documents show what she called a "very un-republican" relationship, and allies of the president accept that the public already pairs him with Moraes. Two episodes feed that perception. Moraes was the justice who ran the inquiry that convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro for the coup plot, and a meeting between Lula and Senate President Davi Alcolumbre took place at Moraes's home.
Lula is advised to stay out of the fight between the justices while tensions run high, but aides privately admit it is "quite difficult" to pull off, Soares said. "Even though president Lula is being advised to keep his distance, there is a concern to distance himself from this case," she said.
The opposition pushes from the other side. On Tuesday, lawmakers filed fresh impeachment requests against Moraes, and Flávio Bolsonaro of the PL party, Lula's rival in the presidential race, and his allies demanded the justice's resignation, CNN Brasil reported. The party wants to elect a right-wing bloc of senators willing to pursue impeachments of Supreme Court justices from 2027 onward, since opening such a trial depends on the Senate president putting it on the agenda.
Within the government, the assessment is that the dispute between Mendonça and Moraes is an internal crisis of the judiciary that a president should not join, according to PT leaders heard by CNN Brasil. They also note that Mendonça oversees investigations involving Lula's son, Fábio Luiz Lula da Silva, known as Lulinha. The party line is that investigations must run their course "no matter whom it hurts", and Lula's campaign will use the unsealing of the Moraes report to demand that Mendonça do the same with the inquiry into the financing of "Dark Horse", a film about Jair Bolsonaro for which Flávio Bolsonaro sent Vorcaro an audio message asking for money, the channel reported.
What comes next
While Lula weighs silence, STF President Edson Fachin began one-on-one consultations with the other justices on Tuesday and did not say whether the case will reach the full bench, according to G1. Speaking at an event at the court on Wednesday, he promised an answer.
"In the coming days, once the necessary analysis of the facts is complete and the pertinent institutional procedures are observed, this presidency will announce, in due time and without haste, the appropriate and necessary measures."
The government itself assesses, according to CNN Brasil, that the scandal will inevitably bleed into the election campaign and reinforce the opposition's banner of attacks on the Supreme Court. "There is an impact. We do not know yet if it will decide the election, but it has an impact, and that worries president Lula's campaign a lot," Soares said.