Anderson Torres claims that the coup draft was disposable and ‘without legal viability’ – 02/02/2023 – Politics

Former Minister of Justice in the Jair Bolsonaro government, Anderson Torres, said in a statement that he believes he received the draft decree that provided for the imposition of a state of defense at the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), in his office at the Ministry of Justice.

Such as Sheet revealed, the Federal Police found in the house of the former minister, who would later become Secretary of Public Security of the Federal District, a draft (proposal) of a decree for then President Bolsonaro to establish a state of defense at the headquarters of the TSE.

The objective, according to the text, was to reverse the result of the election, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) won. Such a measure would be unconstitutional.

About the document having been found at his home, he said that his advisory separated two folders of documents for his analysis and, due to the overload of work, he took all the documents in the folder home to his home.

“Important documents were dispatched and returned to the ministry and the rest were discarded,” Torres told the police this Thursday (2). He has been imprisoned for three weeks by order of the Federal Supreme Court.

He also stated that he considered the draft of the decree “totally disposable” and that it was a document “without legal viability”. He also said he believed an employee at his home might have placed the document on his shelf.

“That it was not because it was found on the shelf that it would matter; that in fact it should have been discarded: which highlights that technically the document is very bad, with errors in Portuguese, without legal basis, divorced from the ability of the assistants of the Ministry of Justice in producing the document,” he said in the statement, according to the transcript.

He also declared that he had no idea who prepared the document, that he never asked for it to be done and that he had learned from the press that other people had received documents of similar content.

He added that he was unaware of the circumstances in which it was produced and that such document was not forwarded to anyone.

“He expressly declares that he never brought such a document to the attention of then President Bolsonaro, that his advisory was preparing his portfolio; that he did not take action, as he completely ignored that writing, since that had no value in his opinion”, says the testimony.

Asked about the location of his cell phone, he said he didn’t leave it in the United States, “but he lost it.” He said that, with the decree of his arrest in Brazil, “he began to be sought by an infinity of people, at which time he decided to turn off the cell phone; he does not know where it is, but he can provide the cloud password”.

He also said that there was never a conversation with the then president about the alternation of power and that he heard an interview with him saying that if he lost the election he would respect the results of the polls but that, after the election, Bolsonaro “began to become introspective”.

However, he said that during Bolsonaro’s term he questioned the counting method and that it should be more transparent and, after the election, the result of the election was not questioned and he realized that the president went through a “process of accepting his defeat”.

When asked about his opinion regarding possible fraud in the electoral process, he replied that he “particularly does not believe and that this matter was not dealt with by the declarant as Minister of Justice”.

Regarding his participation in a “live” with former president Bolsonaro in July 2021, when he questioned the fairness of the electoral system, he replied that this live lasted two hours and only participated in five minutes at the end to present a public document that dealt with measures that would guarantee greater transparency to the electoral system.

The document, according to Torres, would have been produced due to a call
TSE public so that civil society organizations and institutions could opine about the health and safety and improvements of the electoral system.

“That the report you read on live was prepared by federal criminal experts who pointed out improvements to the electoral system, which leaves on record that this public call has been carried out for many years, and previous reports by federal police experts were moving in the same direction”.