Brazil's High Court Invalidates Lula's Convictions, Leaving Him Eligible to
Run Against Bolsonaro
The decision by a Brazilian judge reverses Lula's unjust and politicized
persecution. The corruption that led to this holds many lessons for the
west.
Glenn Greenwald
Mar 9
Brazils ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on November 9, 2019 as he
walked free from jail (Photo by NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP via Getty Images);
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on February 24, 2021 (Photo by EVARISTO
SA/AFP via Getty Images)
The resounding victory of the seven-term right-wing Congressman Jair
Bolsonaro in Brazils 2018 presidential elections was stunning by every
metric.
Consigned for decades to the political fringes due to his explicit praise
for the military dictatorship that savagely ruled Brazil until 1985 along
with other outlandish statements (I would be incapable of loving a gay son.
I prefer that he die in an accident), the former Army Captains ascension
to the presidency of the worlds sixth-most populous country was highly
consequential for the region and the world. That he won by a large margin in
a country that had previously voted for the center-left Workers Party (PT)
in four consecutive national elections dating back to 2002, and whose media
and political establishment were undisguised in their revulsion toward him,
made his victory, whatever else one might say about him, politically
impressive.
But that victory has always borne an enormous asterisk: the judicial
elimination of his most formidable opponent. Polls throughout 2017 and into
2018 uniformly showed former two-term president Lula da Silva, founder of
the Workers Party, as the clear frontrunner. That should not be surprising:
Brazil experienced massive economic growth under Lulas two terms,
eventually passing the UK to become the worlds sixth largest economy (it is
now back to twelfth); millions were lifted out of poverty; and Lula was
term-limited out of office with an 86% approval rating. Thats my man right
there. The most popular politician on Earth, proclaimed then-President
Barack Obama when he met Lula in 2010 at the G-20 summit, Lulas final year
in office.
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As Americans know better than anyone, none of this proves Lula would have
defeated Bolsonaro had he been permitted to run. As the world saw in 2016,
when Hillary Clinton was the overwhelming frontrunner, polling data can be
wrong. And just as was true of Donald Trump in 2016, one could make the case
that 2018 in Brazil was the perfect storm for a Jair Bolsonaro victory no
matter his opposition.
Still, we will never know whether Lula would have prevented Bolsonaros
victory. That is because a low-level judge in the mid-sized city of Curitiba
named Sergio Moro declared Lula, in early 2018, to be guilty of various
corruption felonies, based on procedures, charges and evidence so dubious
that even Lulas long-time critics were skeptical. But the guilty verdict
was issued so quickly that it enabled an appellate court notorious for
rubber-stamping Moros rulings to affirm the conviction, and thus declare
Lula ineligible to run in 2018 by virtue of his losing his political rights.
With Lula out of the way, Bolsonaro crushed PTs replacement, the highly
competent but little-known former one-term São Paulo Mayor, Fernando Haddad,
by seventeen points in the first round and then ten points in the run-off.
For years, Judge Moro and the team of young prosecutors who oversaw the
sprawling anti-corruption probe called "Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) were
regarded as national heroes, as they brought charges and sentenced to long
prison terms some of the nations most powerful oligarchs and politicians.
As their popularity grew, they increasingly resorted to radical and lawless
tactics against their targets, including ordering people imprisoned for
months or years with no trial until they accused others of criminality,
often falsely. But Moros status as a national hero and international icon
he was named to the TIME 100 list in 2016 meant that no institutions,
including superior courts, were willing to challenge him even when he
transgressed clear legal and ethical lines.
All of that began to change in November, 2018. One of Bolsonaros first acts
after he won the election was to offer Moro a huge promotion and an
unprecedented amount of power by becoming his Minister of Justice and Public
Security. In other words, after Judge Moro removed Bolsonaros primary
obstacle from his path by finding Lula guilty under dubious circumstances,
Bolsonaro turned around and elevated Moro to a top spot in the government:
quite a reward for a job well done.
Even Moros most stalwart supporters, including many of the Car Wash
prosecutors, were indignant at this obvious quid pro quo, complaining that
it would forever taint the legacy of their work by vindicating their most
virulent critics. For years, those critics insisted that Car Wash, far from
the noble and high-minded crusade against corruption it was depicted to be,
was instead a sustained abuse of law for naked political and ideological
ends, to achieve what they could not accomplish at the ballot box: namely,
the destruction of the Workers Party. It was, in sum, classic lawfare. When
Moro went to join the Bolsonaro government that he helped usher in not
just as any official but one so powerful that the Brazilian press began
referring to him as Super-Minster even his allies acknowledged the
ammunition it gave to this long-standing suspicion.
The collapse of Moro and the Car Wash probe accelerated greatly on Mothers
Day of 2019 Sunday, May 12 when an anonymous source contacted me to say
he had hacked into the Telegram accounts of some of Brazils most powerful
officials, including Moro and the chief Car Wash prosecutor, Deltan
Dallagnol. In the massive archive he provided me was indeed years worth of
conversations and documents produced by Moro and high-ranking officials, and
it revealed systemic corruption on their part, including the use of
flagrantly illegal and unethical tactics to ensure Lulas conviction.
That brave source, Walter Delgatti, has been arrested on hacking charges and
awaits his criminal trial. His courageous leaking enabled us to report more
than 100 stories in Portuguese and English over the next nine months, some
in partnership with Brazils largest media outlets, that revealed that among
the most corrupt figures in this anti-corruption probe were the heroic judge
that led it and the team of prosecutors whom he improperly and secretly
commanded.
Four months after our first set of articles was published, the Brazilian
Supreme Court ordered Lula released from prison, and Moro began suffering a
series of once-unthinkable defeats in Congress, in the Supreme Court and in
public opinion. Even media outlets long supportive of him called for his
resignation. In April, 2020, Moro resigned his position as Bolsonaros
Justice Minister, accusing the president of serious crimes involving
attempts to interfere in the investigative process to protect his son,
Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, from a growing corruption scandal.
But Lula, back in November, 2019, was freed from prison on the ground that
his imprisonment was improper while he still had appeals left to pursue. It
was not an exoneration. That was a technical ruling that left his
convictions in place and thus made Lula still ineligible to run against
Bolsonaro in 2022. It has been assumed since then that Bolsonaro would be
able to run for re-election without having to face Lula.
________________________________________
All of that changed over the last twenty-four hours. On Thursday, a justice
of the Brazilian Supreme Court who has long been known as one of the most
ardent supporters and defenders of Operation Car Wash ruled that Lulas
criminal convictions were invalid because Judge Moro never had the legal
authority to judge the case in the first place (that the prosecutors knew
this to be so but hid it was one of the first stories we published).
Yesterdays ruling had the effect of sending Lulas case all the way back to
the starting point, to a different court. That makes it extremely unlikely
that he could be found guilty both in the original court and on appeal in
time to ban him from running against Bolsonaro in 2022.
Bolsonaros approval ratings have weakened significantly with his gross
mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, leaving Brazil as clearly the worst of
all major countries in terms of financial and social damage. The expiration
of monthly checks, the payment of which had inflated his popularity in 2020,
has further weakened him. And multiple scandals involving his family remain
a serious weight on his back, particularly since his anti-corruption
posturing was a major part of his 2018 appeal.
But much like Trump, the presidents hard-core base of roughly 30% of the
voting population has remained rock-solid, while another 30% is ambivalent.
That leaves roughly 40% of the country staunchly opposed to him. Bolsonaro
is vulnerable, but his defeat in 2022 is far from certain. Mainstream
political and media centers hate Bolsonaro more than ever. But as was true
for Trump and the U.S., when much of the population (validly) distrusts and
despises these mainstream institutions, their hatred is as much of an asset
as a liability, if not on balance a net benefit.
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That is what makes the prospect of Lulas candidacy so significant. Contrary
to the conventional belief that Lula and his Workers Party are too widely
hated to win again, a recent poll found that the percentage of Brazilians
saying they would never vote for Lula was lower than any other potential
2022 candidate, including Bolsonaro. As the economy sags and the multiple
crises that led to Bolsonaros election worsen, it is easy to envision a
sort of nostalgia for Lula who has not been in power since 2010
replacing the intense anti-PT sentiment that was a key factor in Bolsonaros
2018 victory.
A major variable is the boost Lula will get from the public perception that,
all along, he was the victim of persecution, exactly as he insisted for
years.
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Here's an amazing excerpt from the interview I did with Lula in May, 2019 --
when he was still unjustly imprisoned. It was weeks before we began our
exposés (he didn't know we had the archive). He speaks about the collusion
between his corrupt prosecutors/judge & the press:
March 8th 2021
136 Retweets707 Likes
None of what has happened or what has been revealed proves the negative that
Lula is innocent of corruption: Lula himself has said repeatedly that this
cannot be proven until he has a fair trial, which he has never been given.
But Brazilians already watched Lula waltz out of Moros prison in 2019, and
are watching now as the Supreme Court invalidates his convictions. All of
that will likely vindicate in the public mind Lulas argument that what was
corrupt all along was not the ex-President but those who sought to imprison
him and ban him from running against Bolsonaro.
That scenario appears even more likely with new events today at the Supreme
Court. Not content to invalidate Lulas convictions merely on jurisdictional
grounds, several of the high courts members are urging a ruling that Judge
Moro all along proved himself to be biased, unfair and even unethical in how
he presided over Lulas trial. Though likely to be close, it appears the
justices urging this outcome command a majority on the court. It is hard to
overstate the impact of such a ruling: for years it was Moro successfully
sitting in judgment of and condemning Lula, but now it appears that Lula may
be effectively exonerated while the judge will become the condemned (the
Supreme Court suspended its proceedings today with the vote tied 2-2 on the
question of whether Moro acted improperly, and it will resume shortly).
It is hard to imagine a better storyline for a politician to use to ride
back to power than this one. Anyone who has witnessed Lulas turbulent but
storied rise from extreme childhood poverty and three consecutive narrow
defeats to one of the 20th Centurys most iconic and successful leaders, and
then his fall from grace into prison and widespread unpopularity, only to
rise again, would know that it is likely that there are further dramatic
chapters to be written in his story.
________________________________________
There are several relevant points from an American perspective beyond the
inherent global significance of Brazil, a country that is the largest in
Latin America and in possession of huge oil reserves and the Amazon. The
first is the abuse of legal process to accomplish nakedly political ends.
Huge amounts of resources and energy were poured into defeating Lula and
especially his handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, at the ballot box.
Dilma, who was imprisoned and tortured in the early 1970s by the
U.S.-supported military dictatorship which Bolsonaro still praises to this
very day, became the countrys first female president with her 2010 victory.
When she ran for re-election in 2014, PTs enemies were convinced they were
finally poised to defeat the party, but they instead narrowly lost to PT yet
again, this time behind the center-right Senator Aécio Neves, who now faces
multiple investigations for extreme corruption, including discussing the
murder of his own cousin in order to silence a witness.
But PTs enemies never accepted the legitimacy of that 2014 defeat, so they
turned to non-democratic means to seize power (one of many ironies was that
Lula, in order to win in 2002 after three losses, made many compromises with
neoliberalism, including selecting a banker as his Vice President, and
pursuing pro-growth policies that allowed the oligarchical class to thrive).
To accomplish PTs destruction, they first impeached Dilma in 2016 based on
a preposterously trivial and pretextual claim of wrongdoing, replacing her
with a lifelong corrupt nonentity named Michel Temer, who was promptly
caught on tape ordering bribes to silence witnesses in his own party. They
then set their sights on the top prize: Lulas head on a pike. And they
concocted all kinds of unethical scams and lies to justify his imprisonment.
This fraud would never have succeeded without the corrupt collusion of the
Brazilian press, which treated Moro and his team of prosecutors the way a
teenager treats their favorite girl and boy bands. A major aspect of what we
were able to reveal is how the Globo media empire whose billionaire
owners, the Marinho boys, owe their wealth to their fathers support for the
dictatorship acted hand-in-hand with the Car Wash prosecutors and Moro all
along: to propagandize the country, obfuscate the wrongdoing of the judge
and prosecutors, and glorify them as heroes and high priests of ethics, all
with the ultimate goal of removing PT from power non-democratically.
As the U.S. witnessed over the last five years, this is increasingly
becoming the playbook for neoliberal elites who are angry that the
population has defied them by voting for those they oppose. Thwarted by the
democratic process, elites now resort instead to subversions of democracy in
the name of upholding it. The employ frivolous impeachments to remove the
leader whose legitimacy they never accepted, lawfare designed to make
governance impossible through endless investigations or even the unjust
imprisonment of their political opponents, and a full-scale union with the
corporate media which openly and shamelessly ceases to report and instead
engages in tawdry political activism to destroy the leaders chosen by the
disobedient population. Indeed, the oligarchical Brazilian media so openly
and overwhelmingly favored Dilmas impeachment that the steadfastly
apolitical press freedom group Reporters Without Borders dropped Brazil to
104th in its annual press freedom rankings and warned that the Brazilian
press abandonment of the journalistic function while agitating for Dilmas
removal was so severe that the Brazilian press itself endangered press
freedom.
As neoliberalism destroys more and more lives around the world, leaving an
endless array of social pathologies in its wake, power centers will seek out
tactics to subvert the democratic will. The increasing insistence on
censoring the internet and controlling the flow of information is one
symptom of elite fear of popular rage and desperation. So, too, is the
related attempt by corporate media outlets to regain their monopoly over
news and discourse by discrediting anyone or anything which sits in
opposition to them. And the playbook that resulted in Dilmas removal from
office less than eighteen months after Brazil elected her, followed by the
unjust imprisonment of Lula to ensure he could not run and win again, is
reflective of a pattern already emerging in the west: abusing the force of
law, propaganda and state processes to destroy those whom the population was
not supposed to elect.
The same ruling class fears motivate increasing attacks on anyone who
effectively exposes the rot and deceit of their conduct. Just as the U.S.
Government has imprisoned Julian Assange and exiled Edward Snowden, the
Brazilian government is intent on imprisoning my source, Walter Delgatti,
for the crime of exposing the truth (they also tried, unsuccessfully, to
criminally prosecute me for the crime of doing the reporting that exposed
the fraud of Lulas prosecution).
The guardians of the ruling neoliberal order know their days are numbered
and will become increasingly desperate to cling to power for as long as it
can. The playbook used and just exposed in Brazil will be seen with greater
frequency as a hated elite seek to weaken that which most threatens their
interests: a discourse and a democracy they can no longer manipulate and
control.
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