Brazil at a crossroads

Alexandre de Moraes’s strategy, the article argues, remains unchanged: instead of explaining himself, he attacks the person raising the allegations. When the first conversations involving Daniel Vorcaro appeared in the media in March, Moraes issued a draft statement suggesting that the messages from the Master owner were intended for other people. This week, after 52 messages between Vorcaro and an account bearing Moraes’s name were revealed, the minister issued no statement.

Instead, according to the article, Moraes activated the fake-news inquiry against André Mendonça, the rapporteur in the case, relying on an anonymous Federal Police intelligence report. The report contains a series of political assumptions, including the claim that Jorge Messias’s nomination to the Supreme Federal Court represents a “risk” because of his closeness to Mendonça and his supposed difficulty in assessing the “political risks” of the Lulinha case.

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risk

The article also says the report portrayed Mendonça as “aggressively” trying to change the balance of power on the Supreme Court, at the expense of the group of justices who, in the report’s words, acted to save Brazilian democracy. It questions who requested that Moraes’s conduct be “evaluated” by someone in the Federal Police and how the report reached the minister.

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aggressively

The writer presents the episode as part of a familiar pattern in which investigations are blocked and those who attempt them face consequences. Eduardo Tagliaferro is cited as the clearest example. A criminal expert who participated in the power structure, Tagliaferro made serious allegations, including an instruction to “use your creativity” to produce evidence against selected targets. The article says he ended up as a defendant while his allegations were not investigated.

Now, the writer argues, the same tactic could work again by creating a false equivalence between a supposed procedural error by Mendonça and Moraes’s documented relationship with Vorcaro. With Brazil divided and elections approaching, the dispute could become a Fla-Flu-style rivalry, with Lula supporters aligning with Moraes and Flávio Bolsonaro supporters with Mendonça. The supplied article ends mid-sentence after saying that the political game is real.

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use your creativity