Justice André Mendonça of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) published a note on Thursday (Sept. 17) answering attacks by Gilmar Mendes, the court's longest-serving justice, over his handling of the Master case, in which Mendonça is the reporting justice. He denied leaking information, said he had ordered an inquiry into every improper disclosure, and said the push to lift the secrecy of every proceeding in the investigation did not come from him. According to G1, the note came hours after Gilmar said on social media that his colleague had "political-electoral" aims in the release of information that mentions Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet, whom Gilmar defended.
Without naming Gilmar, Mendonça wrote that he "never turned the plenary into a political stage or a circus ring, bellowing, in an attempt to mask with truculence empty insinuations that lack any minimally acceptable legal grounding". In that post, the senior justice called his colleague a "pixuleco eleitoral", a derogatory Brazilian slang term, and compared his conduct to that of Deltan Dallagnol and Sergio Moro during the Car Wash investigation. In Gilmar's words, "the lifting of secrecy appeared on the eve of September 7 to inflate the streets, reap political dividends, smear reputations and intimidate those who oppose this method".
What the note says
At the center of the document, Mendonça said the request for full disclosure of the case files came from the side that now complains about it.
"The push to lift the secrecy of each and every proceeding, without exception, did not come from the reporting justice. It came from those who now claim to be outraged by the publication of the case files."
The note states that "what the reporting justice did was to lift the secrecy of a specific proceeding, in a reasoned decision and within the strict limits of what was his to decide". Mendonça added: "It is at least curious that the criticism comes from someone who always called for unrestricted publicity, for the entirety of the investigation." On leaks, he denied any tolerance and said he had opened "a specific phase on leaks tied to a Federal Police employee".
He also accused his peers of selective concern: "It is striking that the concern with other people's exposure should manifest itself selectively, right after the request for access to the cell phone of a person under investigation and the publication, in the press, of conversations of every kind that embarrass, coincidentally, only justices who hold a different view." For Mendonça, if there is "misuse of publicity" at the court, it lies in the "attempt to coerce peers, with insinuations that certain content may or may not become public depending on the course of certain rulings".
A crisis on the bench
The note is the latest chapter in a feud between the two justices in the middle of a presidential election year. On Tuesday (Sept. 15), during a session on a Federal Police report that pointed to messages exchanged between Daniel Vorcaro, founder of Banco Master, and Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Gilmar defended Gonet and accused Mendonça of "levity" and "shamelessness". The shouting match ended with Mendonça yelling "Respect me" and Gilmar replying "Go ahead and cry". According to Poder360, Gilmar also called "embarrassing" Mendonça's decision to remove Federal Police director-general Andrei Rodrigues, and said the rapporteur runs the inquiry with an "unequivocal political-electoral bias".
Facing the standoff, Justice Flávio Dino asked to review the case, a request that suspends the vote, and demanded action from court president Edson Fachin. That demand is still pending. In his note, Mendonça called for "urgency in approving a code of ethics" for the court, a proposal backed by Fachin, and cited article 36 of Brazil's judiciary organic law, which bars judges from publicly voicing opinions on pending cases.