(Bloomberg) -- Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes pushed back against allegations of impropriety on Wednesday after the publication of leaked messages fueled the latest effort from allies of former President Jair Bolsonaro to impeach him.
Citing a trove of messages and documents it obtained, Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported Tuesday that Moraes allegedly ordered Brazil’s top electoral court to produce reports that supported his own investigations into Bolsonaro supporters during the country’s 2022 presidential election. Moraes also led the electoral court during the contest.
The report thrust Moraes, the crusading judge who has spearheaded criminal probes into Bolsonaro and aggressive campaigns against disinformation, back into the center of a firestorm that has engulfed the country’s judiciary in recent years.
The judge’s many critics, including Bolsonaro and billionaire X owner Elon Musk, have long argued that he has abused his power and pushed for his removal from the bench. Moraes and his supporters, by contrast, have asserted that he is defending Brazil’s democracy from efforts to undermine it.
Moraes denied wrongdoing during a public Supreme Court session, saying that his reports had been properly documented and that he had “nothing to hide.” Other justices defended his work, with Judge Luis Roberto Barroso saying that the court was “committed to the constitution, to the search for the possible truth, to democracy.”
Bolsonaro allies in the Brazilian Senate, however, seized on the report, saying it was proof that Moraes had overstepped his bounds.
A group of lawmakers including Damares Alves, a senator and former minister in Bolsonaro’s government, said Wednesday that they would launch a national campaign to gather support for Moraes’s removal from the court.
The impeachment push is unlikely to pose a threat to the judge: Senate head Rodrigo Pacheco does not intend to follow up on the request when it is officially filed, according to a person familiar with the situation who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Moraes has long drawn the ire of Bolsonaro and his supporters over orders to restrict social media accounts and platforms to combat disinformation.
The anger has only intensified since the election. The electoral court last year barred Bolsonaro from seeking office for eight years for making false claims about election fraud. A probe into Bolsonaro’s role in the Jan. 8, 2023 insurrection attempt that sought to overturn the results of his narrow election defeat, meanwhile, is ongoing. The former president has denied wrongdoing in the cases against him, often characterizing them as political witchhunts.
Brazilian lawmakers have launched 20 requests to impeach Moraes since 2021, according to Pacheco’s Senate office. They have filed one targeting Moraes and Barroso, and another seeking to impeach all members of the Supreme Court.
The calls have also come from beyond Brazil’s borders: Musk urged Brazilian lawmakers to impeach Moraes in April, amid a public clash over restrictions on certain X accounts.
Musk also weighed in on the leaked messages Tuesday, resharing a post from the company’s Global Government Affairs account that included an apparent request from Moraes to block accounts.
“This platform is being asked to censor content in Brazil where the censorship demands require us to violate Brazilian law!” Musk said in a post. “That is not right.”
Bolsonaro’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite the claims against him, Moraes did not do anything improper or irregular, said Fernando Neisser, a professor of electoral law at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo.
The information in Moraes’s reports was publicly accessible, Neisser said, adding that in the cases in question the judge was not producing evidence, but was instead deciding whether or not to take a precautionary measure.
“A number of institutions were formally notified, including the electoral court,” Neisser said in an interview. “There is no violation of the accusatory principle.”
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.