Cid’s defense aims for release while negotiating plea bargains – 09/08/2023 – Power

The defense of Mauro Cid, former aide-de-camp of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), asked Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), for provisional freedom, amid the negotiation of a plea bargain that could affect the former president.

The request was made after he expressed to the minister last Wednesday (6) his intention to sign an agreement with the investigators. Imprisoned for more than four months in the Brasília Army Battalion, Cid was one of Bolsonaro’s closest assistants and adopted a stance of greater cooperation with police authorities after changing lawyers in August.

The current person responsible for the defense of the Army’s lieutenant colonel, Cezar Bittencourt, told Sheet this Friday (8) that negotiations on the agreement are still ongoing. “We haven’t closed, we are talking about the details, but this [vai ficar] for next week,” he said.

Cid was arrested in a Federal Police operation on suspicion of having falsified vaccination cards for Bolsonaro and his family. The topic is one of the focuses on which the PF demands more details – especially those related to the former president’s involvement.

The military is also being investigated in other cases, such as the leak of confidential data on the electronic voting machine and the coup attacks on January 8th. According to reports made by Bolsonaro’s allies in recent weeks, the former advisor is worried about his family and could do whatever he can to get out of prison.

Cid’s agreement has already been accepted by the Federal Police, but still needs to be approved by Moraes. The decision could come in the next few days.

The proposal must also be analyzed by the PGR (Attorney General’s Office) – which, when contacted, stated that “the process is being carried out under secrecy”. Moraes’ decision does not depend on the body’s position.

According to people close to the investigations, for Cid’s plea agreement to be approved, the authorities need to assess whether there is newness and evidence regarding the information presented.

The whistleblower cannot, in isolation, support sentences without other information corroborating the statements made. The reports must be investigated, as well as the materials presented in agreement.

Amid Cid’s negotiations, another of Bolsonaro’s advisors, Max Guilherme Machado de Moura, was released this Thursday (7) by decision of Moraes. He had been arrested on the same day as Cid and will now comply with precautionary measures, being monitored using an electronic ankle monitor.

The suspicion is that Max had participated in the fraud scheme in the Ministry of Health system. He confirmed, in a statement to the PF, that he had issued his vaccination certificate as if he were immunized even without having received doses against Covid.

Contributions from Cid are also expected on the role of those involved in the jewelry scandal, in which there was an alleged diversion, sale, repurchase and return of high-value gifts received by Bolsonaro from foreign authorities.

The PF included Cid among those responsible for what it classified as a “rescue operation”, carried out by some of the former president’s main assistants to recover jewelry previously sold in the United States – but which Brazilian authorities considered to belong to the country’s public assets.

The jewelry investigation is, to date, the most worrying for those around the former president, as it brings him closer to an alleged scheme to embezzle public money.

Details about a document found on Cid’s cell phone that contained a kind of coup plan to reverse Lula’s (PT) election last year can also be covered in the collaboration.

Messages were identified in which an Armed Forces officer asks Cid to convince Bolsonaro to order a military intervention — which would constitute a coup d’état.

The proposal for a plea bargain was made after going back and forth with Cid’s lawyer regarding the military’s willingness to involve Bolsonaro.

Less than a month after assuming the defense of the soldier, Bittencourt accumulated backtracking in versions and even stated that the possibility of Cid making a statement was “zero”.

On the 31st, Cid gave a ten-hour statement to the PF about the jewelry case. The next day, Bittencourt said that the former aide-de-camp “assumed everything” and did not incriminate Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro and former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro chose to remain silent in statements scheduled with the PF about the case.

Amid the news about the former assistant, Bolsonaro and his wife participated in a service in DF, on Thursday night (7), in which she cried and used the microphone to pray and mention words such as persecution. “They will attack us. The Lord did not promise us that it would be easy. The Lord said that we would be persecuted. All those who had Christ as their savior would be persecuted. And we are being persecuted and wronged.”

The possible denunciation provoked a reaction from Bolsonaro’s allies, such as former Presidential Communications Secretary Fabio Wajngarten.

He published that “there is nothing to report” on his official profile on platform X, formerly Twitter, this Thursday.

The statement, written out of context, was seen as a reference to Cid’s movements.

“To anyone who may be interested in the middle of the September 7th holiday completely empty: there is nothing to REPORT”, he stated, also making reference to the September 7th holiday parades under the management of the Lula government.

Wajngarten, who in addition to being an advisor is also one of Bolsonaro’s lawyers, had come to Cid’s defense in July, when Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp gave testimony to the CPI on January 8th, which was ongoing in Congress.

At the time, Wajngarten protested the fact that the lieutenant colonel had been imprisoned since May and said that they detained him and “threw away the key” to the prison.

“Today he has been in prison for 70 days, without any reason to justify his preventive detention, an extreme measure and which had the expressly contrary opinion of the PGR—which, in addition, decided to revoke the prison,” he said.