The presidential palace, allies of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a faction of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) have set in motion an agreement to shield Justice Alexandre de Moraes from investigation until after October's election. The report, published on Sunday (6), is from Poder360. According to the outlet, the court's president, Edson Fachin, has already delivered the first part of the deal by postponing until after September 22 the review of the suspicions hanging over the justice.
The suspicions concern a possible improper relationship between Moraes, the court's vice president and the justice in charge of the so-called fake news inquiry, and Daniel Vorcaro, founder of Banco Master. According to Poder360, Justice André Mendonça made public on September 1 a set of 52 messages Vorcaro sent to Moraes's phone, recovered from the notes app on the banker's device. No replies from Moraes appear in the material. On March 6, in a note released by the court's communications office, Moraes denied in writing that he had received messages from Vorcaro. Poder360 describes the standoff as the biggest institutional crisis in the court's history.
The group working to keep Moraes on the bench, according to Poder360, includes Justices Gilmar Mendes, Flávio Dino and Cristiano Zanin. The bloc's goal, the outlet reports, is to keep the crisis from shifting the balance of power inside the court. Dino posted about the crisis on social media on Sunday.
"Real and serious problems are being mixed with electoral and economic interests, foreign objectives and even personal hatreds"
Elsewhere in the post, the justice wrote that "institutional integrity is too serious a matter to be shuffled together with electoral interests or with lies".
The calendar pushes the decision to the eve of the vote
The deadlines Fachin set move the rulings close to election day. The court's president gave Moraes, Mendonça, Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet and Federal Police director Andrei Rodrigues until Friday (11) to submit their accounts of the affair. A decision on opening an investigation into Moraes can only come after September 14. The request by Moraes to place Mendonça inside the fake news inquiry, filed on September 3 and removed from the inquiry by Fachin the next day, is now set for resolution after September 22, twelve days before the first round of the presidential election on October 4. Poder360 says the likely outcome is a joint ruling on both cases after that date, on the argument that the review should wait for the first round, or even the runoff on October 25.
Fachin decides whether and when the full bench rules
Mendonça on Sunday (6) released for a full-bench vote the Federal Police report on the alleged relationship between Moraes and Vorcaro, G1 reports. It is now up to Fachin to decide whether and when the court hears the case, and whether the session is open or closed. G1 reports the court president leans toward a public session. According to the blog of journalist Valdo Cruz, cited by G1, Fachin told Lula he intends to send the fallout from the crisis to the full bench. The Prosecutor General's office, in turn, asked on Tuesday (1) that Mendonça's investigation be voided, arguing that only the full bench can decide on any probe targeting Moraes.
Speaking at the Planalto on Friday (4), Fachin said "no authority stands above the Constitution" and that the gravity of the facts "does not justify shortcuts". Mendonça has defended a full-bench review, calling the plenary the "sovereign body to analyze the matter in a technical and strictly legal way". On the campaign trail, Folha de S.Paulo reports that Lula's team plans to take ownership of the debate on judicial reform, pairing it with anti-corruption measures and spending limits for judges and prosecutors, to keep the presidential race from being consumed by the fight between the justices. The next step is Friday's deadline (11). Once it passes, Fachin can put both cases on the bench's agenda or leave the decision until after the election.