The man who put Moro on the ropes

Rio de Janeiro Several weeks after the publication of explosive reports on Judge Sérgio Moro, the American journalist Glenn Greenwald had to answer hostile questions before a legislative commission.

"Whoever should be tried, sentenced and jailed is the journalist!", Exclaimed legislator Katia Sastre, an ally of President Jair Bolsonaro.

The threat may not have been innocuous. A conservative website reported that the federal police had asked regulators to investigate Greenwald's finances. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and her husband, a Brazilian, said they received death threats. Calls for expulsion and homophobic comments have been launched in a hostile political environment.

Greenwald, a lawyer who has devoted himself to journalism and has long defended freedom of expression, is at the center of the first major test of the state of freedom of the press in the Bolsonaro government, which took office on 1 January. January. and openly expressed its nostalgia for the military dictatorship of 1964-1985, a period of censorship of newspapers and torture of some journalists.

"This is a very worrying moment for press freedom in Brazil.There is a government that verbally criticizes journalists with open rhetoric against the press," said Natalie Southwick, coordinator of the program for America. of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists.

The gate L & # 39; interception, from Greenwald, published last month text messages that would show that Judge Sérgio Moro, now Minister of Justice, has improperly advised prosecutors the trial for bribery of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva .

L & # 39; interception He also accused Moro and prosecutors of an investigation into corrupt acts involving many businessmen and politicians and making Moro a national hero for many. The portal said it has received messages from an anonymous source and has an "extensive archive" of information that it has not yet released.

Moro said the reports are sensational and that a "criminal group" wants to invalidate the sentences handed down when, as a judge, he fought against corruption. Subsequently, he published a tweet in which he said that L & # 39; interception it was "a portal aligned with the hackers offenders. "

interpellation

At a hearing held on June 25 at the Committee on Human Rights and Minorities of the Chamber of Deputies, lawmaker Carla Zambelli told Greenwald: "If you do not have any proof of this information, it is false and you are a liar.If that is true, then you are a criminal who has intercepted someone's phone. "

Greenwald replied: "The party in power is obviously very confused about the journalistic work we have done."

Bolsonaro has often criticized the press, accusing her of being a liar, prejudice in favor of the left, who publishes false news, even though she sometimes says that she believes in the freedom of the press .

One of the main targets of Bolsonaro's anger was the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. A week before the elections, he sent a video message stating that if he won, there would be a Brazil "without lies, without false news and without Folha de São Paulo"

He also described Globo, Brazil's largest media conglomerate, as "the enemy" in the WhatsApp messages filtered and published by the press.

"We do not know where they are going to go to realize the authoritarian vision championed by Bolsonaro," Greenwald said.

The journalist, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, is now accompanied by private guards and says that he and other employees of L & # 39; interception They have received detailed and sophisticated death threats, which sometimes include private personal information.

Greenwald was already in the eye of the cyclone when he was part of a team of journalists from The Guardian They won a Pulitzer for reporting on government surveillance programs based on documents by Edward Snowden.

Proponents of Bolsonaro and Moro denounced Greenwald, often focusing on her baduality and that of her husband, the Brazilian legislator David Miranda. Bolsonaro himself once said that he preferred to have a dead son rather than a homobadual son.

Legislators linked to Bolsonaro have asked for the arrest and deportation of Greenwald.

"I am a good villain for this campaign right," said the reporter.

Claim: Judges ask Lula

*AP Agency