Renan Santos, a presidential candidate of the Missão party, filed two impeachment requests with Brazil's Senate on Wednesday (Sep 2) against Supreme Court justices Alexandre de Moraes and Dias Toffoli. According to Poder360, the documents were handed to Senate President Davi Alcolumbre. In an interview published on Thursday (Sep 3), the candidate said that, if elected, he would refuse to comply with rulings issued by Moraes.
"An illegal ruling is not obeyed. Rulings that come from Alexandre de Moraes should not be recognized by the Brazilian state," Renan Santos told the outlet Brado Jornal, in an interview reported by g1, Globo's news portal. He said he would press the Federal Police and oversight bodies to stop enforcing decisions attributed to the justice, and called the current relationship between the Supreme Court and the Senate a "farra da impunidade", Portuguese for a spree of impunity.
On the impeachment effort, the candidate said he intends to use the transition period, in November and December, to pressure the Senate to advance the requests against the two justices, conditioning the country's governability on it. "The country will remain shut down until these two are brought down," he said. According to him, the next president must take office ready to appoint six justices to the court, four to regular vacancies and two to replace Moraes and Toffoli.
Grounds for the requests
The filings came one day after Justice André Mendonça, the case's rapporteur, made public a Federal Police report on the relationship between former banker Daniel Vorcaro, founder of the defunct Banco Master, and members of the court. In the petition against Moraes, Renan Santos alleges a crime of responsibility under Article 39 of Law 1.079, which covers conduct "incompatible with the honor, dignity and decorum" of office. He writes that the justice received improper benefits and acted as "a kind of partner" of Vorcaro.
"Certainly, Vorcaro did not grant such advantages without the expectation of something in return," the petition against Alexandre de Moraes states.
The request against Toffoli follows a similar line. Renan Santos cites reports that the justice kept an ownership stake in a resort in rural Paraná state, a project that received at least 35 million reais from funds linked to Vorcaro's companies, according to the candidate.
Alcolumbre's message
Alcolumbre responded on Wednesday night from the Senate floor. According to the blog of Gerson Camarotti on g1, his defense of Moraes carried two messages: that the Senate president will block any attempt to impeach the court's vice president, and a veiled threat to Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the PL presidential candidate and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Allies of Flávio fear, according to g1, that Alcolumbre could revive the case of the film "Dark Horse", a biopic of the former president, just weeks before the October election.
"Everyone forgot that 130 million reais were requested from the same person to make a film. And now the only culprit is Justice Alexandre de Moraes," Alcolumbre said in the chamber.
The decision to shelve or accept the complaints rests with Alcolumbre, a political step that works as the first filter of the process. Asked on Tuesday (Sep 1), he did not say whether he would move the new requests forward, and noted that the Senate already has 109 impeachment requests against Supreme Court justices pending, a volume he called "not normal". If a complaint is accepted, the process can move to a special committee and then to the full Senate.