Bolsonaro may face even more defeats in the criminal sphere
Former president is under investigation on various other fronts, primarily related to January 8th. He is seen as the mastermind behind the attacks
247 – Jair Bolsonaro (PL) will still have to face the likely consequences of investigations in the criminal sphere after suffering a setback in the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). Last Friday (June 30), the TSE convicted Bolsonaro of political abuse of power and improper use of communication media, making him ineligible for eight years.
Beyond this recent defeat, Bolsonaro is under investigation on several other fronts, primarily related to January 8th and other cases included in the digital militias inquiry.
"The votes of some ministers in the TSE, including the rapporteur, Benedito Gonçalves, and Alexandre de Moraes, rapporteur of the criminal investigations, indicate that Bolsonaro is seen as a member of the digital militia," the report points out.
Gonçalves signaled in his vote that the understanding is that there is a direct relationship between Bolsonaro's discourse against the voting machines before the election and the subsequent attacks.
The draft of the coup found at the home of former minister Anderson Torres, which aimed to establish a state of defense of the TSE, is the script of the Bolsonaroist coup, according to Gonçalves. "It is evident that the draft materialized in a formally technical text an exit strategy in case of indications of electoral fraud in 2022. This in a context where the hypothesis of fraud was treated as equivalent to the defeat of the candidate for presidential reelection," said the minister.
Moraes, on the other hand, mentioned the 'digital militias,' stating that this group includes all those who have been producing and disseminating disinformation. The magistrate highlighted the need to punish everyone. "Disinformation produced and disseminated by true digital militias worldwide. If this authoritarian bias and extremism are what we want for our democracy, let us reaffirm our faith in our democracy and the rule of law. We will not allow digital militias to once again destabilize elections and democratic institutions."
In a vote accepting the charges against Bolsonaroist terrorists from January 8th, Moraes had already pointed to the connection between this case and the ongoing investigations against Bolsonaro, indicating that he sees the former president as the mastermind behind the attack earlier this year.
The officer in charge of the case involving the cell phone of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, a former aide-de-camp to Bolsonaro, has also expressed a similar understanding regarding the coup script. The conversations found on the device "revealed the process of materializing the objectives of the association under investigation in the real world, surpassing its actions beyond the virtual sphere. The digital militia reverberated and amplified through multiple channels the idea that the presidential elections were fraudulent," according to him.