STF crisis: Key points from Mendonça’s decision to remove PF leadership

Brazil’s Supreme Court has entered an open internal confrontation after Justice André Mendonça ordered the immediate preventive removal of the Federal Police director-general, Andrei Passos Rodrigues, and its intelligence director, Leandro Almada da Costa.

Mendonça also ordered the Federal Police’s internal affairs unit to open criminal and administrative disciplinary investigations into what he called “serious facts” involving the production of secret intelligence reports. The removals take effect immediately, but the Supreme Court’s Second Panel must review and endorse the decision.

According to Mendonça’s decision, Rodrigues sent Justice Alexandre de Moraes at least six intelligence reports produced confidentially between Aug. 3 and Aug. 31, 2026, as part of the Fake News Inquiry. Mendonça said he and Jorge Messias, Brazil’s attorney general, were among those monitored.

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Monitoring a Supreme Court justice by the intelligence service of the Federal Police is unlawful monitoring of a justice of the country’s highest court, which in itself reveals the gravity of the situation.

“Monitoring a Supreme Court justice by the intelligence service of the Federal Police is unlawful monitoring of a justice of the country’s highest court, which in itself reveals the gravity of the situation,” Mendonça wrote. He said the reports were internal documents that should have been known only to those who produced and received them.

The case has intensified tensions inside the court. The article says the Federal Police, Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet and Moraes have each accused Mendonça, in different ways, of investigating a Supreme Court justice. The dispute followed Mendonça’s decision to lift the secrecy of investigations into links between Moraes and businessman Daniel Vorcaro, after which Moraes released excerpts from an intelligence report.

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This is the first time there has been news of a situation like this. It must also be investigated because a Supreme Court justice knew about the production of these documents. These situations are strictly internal; no one should know about them except those who produced and received them.