From PCO to Bolsonaro: Who is targeted in the fake-news inquiry Moraes used against Mendonça

Brazil’s Supreme Court fake-news inquiry has been open for seven and a half years, and its latest target is not an outside critic but one of the court’s own justices. Alexandre de Moraes added fellow Justice André Mendonça to the list of investigated people amid an internal dispute between the two.

Justice Dias Toffoli opened the inquiry on his own initiative in March 2019, when he was Supreme Court president, and appointed Moraes as rapporteur. It began after a report by Crusoé magazine discussed a Lava Jato document in which Marcelo Odebrecht allegedly referred to Toffoli. The stated purpose was to investigate attacks on Supreme Court justices and their relatives, but the case later expanded.

The investigation came to include allies of former President Jair Bolsonaro accused of trying to undermine the court’s authority. The list also includes the Partido da Causa Operária, after it made public criticisms of the justices, as well as YouTubers Allan dos Santos and Bernardo Küster and former women’s-rights activist Sara Winter.

Moraes also ordered a new secret investigation in January into the alleged leaking of tax data belonging to justices and their relatives by officials from Brazil’s Federal Revenue Service, the Council for Financial Activities Control and the Federal Data Processing Service. The decision followed reports about the hiring of his wife’s law firm by Banco Master and Toffoli’s business dealings with the bank, owned by Daniel Vorcaro, at a resort in Paraná.

The widening inquiry has intensified criticism of Moraes’s role as investigator, alleged victim and judge at the same time. A recent example involved a search against blogger Luís Pablo Conceição Almeida, who had written about a court vehicle allegedly used by Justice Flávio Dino during trips to Maranhão. The matter initially went to Justice Cristiano Zanin, who found a connection with the fake-news inquiry and sent it to Moraes.