Mendonça sends case over PF report on Moraes and Vorcaro messages to Supreme Court hearing

Justice André Mendonça has cleared for judgment by Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court plenary a case involving a Federal Police report that identified Alexandre de Moraes as an interlocutor of former banker Daniel Vorcaro in messages found on the businessman’s phone.

The move was recorded on Sunday, Sept. 6, but Supreme Court Chief Justice Edson Fachin has not yet set a date for the hearing. Mendonça ordered the police report, and its secrecy was lifted last Tuesday after Estadão published messages between Moraes and Vorcaro.

The disclosure has intensified a dispute inside the court. On the same day Mendonça made the report public, Moraes used the so-called fake news inquiry to order the Federal Police to send the court intelligence reports referring to Supreme Court justices, including documents about Mendonça’s activities.

On Thursday, Sept. 3, Moraes used that material in the same inquiry to accuse Mendonça of abuse of authority and a crime of responsibility. He sent the matter to Fachin, who opened a separate procedure under his direction to examine the report released by Mendonça and requested explanations from the authorities involved.

On Friday, Sept. 4, Fachin decided to incorporate Moraes’s request to investigate Mendonça into that proceeding. He also removed from the fake news inquiry the decision and attachments that Moraes had used. The materials from both sides of the dispute will now move together under Fachin’s supervision, with the deadline for all parties to respond set for Sept. 21.