Scandal in Brazil: a court applied censorship on false information and raided a general house

The case provoked a reaction from the Court against the Court, but it also upset the bases of military power, which is part of the government of former Captain Bolsonaro, openly criticizing the profile of " guarantee "of the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

But everything was closed in a few hours, with borders of institutional scandal, when Attorney General Raquel Dodge accused the Court of having acted outside the proceedingsthat is to say, to do the instruction without the public prosecutor.

Superior Court Judge Alexandre de Morais ordered eight searches against "false information" or press operations against the highest court's president, Antonio Dias Toffoli., after having ordered to censor a supposedly implausible note on the digital portals Crusoe and O Antagonista, property of the financial agency Empiricus.

In addition, blocked social networks from the survey for "content of hatred and subversion of public order".

These media published clbadified information held by the prosecutors of the Lava Jato operation in Curitiba on a statement linking the company Odebrecht to Toffoli, in which no illegal problem is detected or discussed.

"What is happening goes beyond censorship," said vice president and general Hamilton Mourao.

One of the raids was in the house of a retired general, Paulo Chagas, who talked about the operation on social networks. Chagas is a known critic of the Court and has been a candidate of President Bolsonaro for the post of Governor of the Federal District of Brasilia.

The opposition and ruling coalition leaders have denounced the obligation to erase, on pain of having to pay about $ 30,000 a day, the notes on Toffoli.

The case is part of the growing litigation between the operation Lava Jato – prosecutors of first instance, the federal police and the current minister Sérgio Moro – and the Federal Supreme Court, which put a brake on extraordinary powers of which it has the anti-corruption team since 2014.

The note censored by Judge De Morais in defense of the president of the court stated that the corrupted confessed Marcelo Odebrecht, in his winning speech, recalled that one of the leaders of the construction company had carried out with Toffoli over the last ten years.

At that time, Toffoli was the general advocate of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but the note does not bind him to an illegal act or to the denunciation made by Odebrecht.

According to Folha from San Pablo, Odebrecht tried to put pressure on Toffoli and the then Minister of Mines and Energy, then President Dilma Rousseff, who did not accede to their requests.

The order to remove from the Web the notes that cite this fact was rejected by the other ministers of the court.

The context of this case is also reflected in a movement of various ideological currents in the Senate to create an inquiry commission on the judiciary, which was temporarily set aside by the Speaker of the Upper House, Bolsonarista Davi Alcolumbre.

The Supreme Court goes through complex situationsAmong them, the wing's guarantees are directly facing the Bolsonaro family ("I need a corporal and a soldier to dismiss the court," said MP Eduardo Bolsonaro in January).

The main reason is the case that holds the former president in detention Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, found guilty of corruption and leader of the opposition, as part of Operation Lava Jato, which became the flag of the Bolsonaro government with the entry of Moro to the post of minister.

The court must deal with the release of Lula: he has two cases of unconstitutional detention without exhausting all judicial proceedings.

And in case of acceptance of unconstitutionality, Lula and hundreds of thousands of detainees would be released.

"The way they treated General Chagas is very worrying," said retired general Eduardo Villas Boas about the raid., special advisor of the palace of Plbadto.

Last year, Villas Boas, head of the military, had threatened to send a tweet to the court with a possible intervention "in case of impunity": the next day the Supreme Court had rejected by 6 votes to 5 habeas corpus who had released Lula.