Bolsonaro at TSE: Defense ignores disinformation against ballot boxes – 06/27/2023 – Politics

In the action that could make Jair Bolsonaro (PL) ineligible due to lies and distortions about the electoral system in a meeting with ambassadors, the defense of the former president says that there was no offense, but omits to demonstrate that the speeches at the event would have basis in evidence.

Among other statements already denied —and ignored by his lawyers in the final arguments of the process—, Bolsonaro stated at the time that the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) itself said that the 2018 results may have been changed and that it is not the court that makes the decision. vote count.

Bolsonaro’s speech at the event is characterized by his defense with expressions such as “point of view”, “legitimate doubts” and “attempt to expose the improvement of the electoral process”.

At the time, however, Bolsonaro did not say he was giving his opinion. On the contrary, right at the beginning of the event, he stated that he would base his speech on a Federal Police investigation into a hacker attack on the TSE.

“Everything I’m going to talk about here is documented, nothing in my head,” he told the ambassadors. “Everything I say here is either the conclusion of the PF or it is directly information provided by the TSE”, he added.

“We cannot face elections under the cloak of distrust. We want to make sure that, for whom the voter voted, the vote goes exactly to that person. The TSE itself says that in 2018 numbers may have been changed”, he said. .

The investigation cited by Bolsonaro began in November 2018 after the court called the PF. Excerpts from that same survey had been read by Bolsonaro almost a year earlier, in August 2021, in an interview with Rádio Jovem Pan and released on his social networks.

A Sheet contacted Bolsonaro’s defense, questioning why the defense did not seek to demonstrate the basis of the then president’s statements at the meeting with ambassadors, but did not receive a response until the publication of the text.

Among the evidence included in the TSE action, but without public access, is the police inquiry into the aforementioned hacker attack.

This Monday (26), after a meeting with PL deputies in the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo, Bolsonaro said “it is not fair to talk about an attack on democracy” to describe the meeting. He also referred to his speeches as “criticisms or suggestions for improving the electoral system”.

The trial at the TSE began last Thursday and will resume this Tuesday (27), with the rapporteur’s vote, starting at 7 pm.

In his opinion, the deputy electoral attorney general, Paulo Gonet, claims that Bolsonaro took the information from the PF inquiry out of context, ignoring disputes already made by the TSE itself on the subject.

“There was no allusion to these disputes in the speech to the ambassadors, having been presented as certain facts what were speculations without reputable basis, known untruths or conclusions that did not come from their context”, he says.

Still in 2021, the court released a note in which it stated that the investigated attack “did not pose any risk to the integrity of the 2018 elections”. In addition, delegate Victor Campos, until then responsible for the investigation, responded in a statement that he had not identified in the file any element that would allow him to state that there was manipulation of votes or fraud in any election.

Also when talking about transmissions in 2021, Gonet, from the Electoral Public Ministry, says that “from the occurrence of a true fact [houve um ataque de hacker ao TSE, embora desvinculado de finalidade eleitoral]the investigated person extracts what cannot be deduced from him”.

The opinion mentions that Bolsonaro mentioned a document by the then Secretary of Technology and Information at the TSE, Giuseppe Dutra Janino, with confirmation of the invader’s action, but leaves aside the reservation made by him that the invasion was limited, not reaching the system voting, counting and tallying of votes.

In the speech to the ambassadors, Bolsonaro also took out of context and distorted the speech of a TSE employee about the 2020 elections, to claim that it would not be the court that totaled the votes.

“It’s not the TSE that counts the votes, it’s a third-party company. I don’t think it was necessary to continue this explanation here”, he said.

The totalization of results is carried out by the court, as well as the development of the totalization system. The company Oracle is contracted to supply the server (supercomputer), which is physically located at the TSE, and the database management system, which is administered by the TSE team.

“The assertion that a third-party company does the counting of votes is simply false and only understandable in a context intended to undermine the credibility of the electoral process,” Gonet wrote in his opinion.

The ex-president’s lawyers maintain that, at the meeting, Bolsonaro “exposed, clearly, bluntly, in simple, easy and accessible language, on a public network, what his doubts would be and the points that – in his opinion – would have the potential to compromise the fairness of the electoral process”.

It also states that the then president “has legitimate doubts about the security of the electoral process, based on documentation that was delivered to him”, referring to a report by the TCU (Tribunal de Contas da União) on the audit of the electoral process.

In the final allegations chapter that deals with the meeting with the ambassadors specifically, this is the only reference to external documentation to seek to justify Bolsonaro’s speech. The quoted passage, however, has nothing to do with Bolsonaro’s statements that are considered false or out of context.

Already in another chapter of the allegations, the defense addresses the interview with Jovem Pan and the other two lives of 2021 that were added to the action by decision of the rapporteur of the action in the TSE, the electoral inspector general Benedito Gonçalves.

The defense refutes that there was “disclosure of false information”, but is restricted to citing an excerpt from the inquiry report which, in summary, recognizes the occurrence of the hacker attack, without supporting, however, the conclusions and lessons that Bolsonaro draws from the episode .