Gilmar Mendes and Dias Toffoli nod to Lula – 10/15/2023 – Power

Ministers Dias Toffoli and Gilmar Mendes, from the STF (Supreme Federal Court), consolidated themselves between 2019 and 2022 as Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) main bridges with the court.

Both had a personal relationship with the former president, went to off-schedule meetings with him and were consulted for appointments to key positions in the Judiciary.

Gilmar placed allies in important positions appointed by Bolsonaro and made a decision favorable to the then presidential family at a sensitive time: the height of the split scandal linked to senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ).

Toffoli also gave court orders that benefited Bolsonaro and made political gestures. He even relativized the military dictatorship, defended by the former president, and classified it as a “1964 movement”.

At the beginning of the last government, Toffoli suspended investigations that were ongoing in the country based on data from Coaf (Financial Activities Control Council).

The body had identified atypical movements in Flávio’s accounts and the revelations were at the time the main flank of political wear and tear for the then president.

Toffoli, however, responded to a request from the senator’s defense and suspended the investigations. Four months later, Gilmar made a decision to reinforce the blockade of the investigations.

Bolsonaro, who had the STF as a preferential target in his attacks against the Judiciary, used to spare Gilmar and Toffoli.

Wanted by Sheetthe two STF ministers did not want to comment.

Now, Toffoli and Gilmar started criticizing Bolsonaro and making nods to Lula (PT). The first took advantage of the decision in which he annulled all evidence related to Odebrecht’s leniency agreement to state that the arrest of the current president in Lava Jato was “one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the country’s history.”

Furthermore, he worked to facilitate the appointment of Cristiano Zanin, former lawyer and friend of Lula, to the Supreme Court. The magistrate asked to move from the First to the Second Panel of the court, which was seen behind the scenes as another sign to please Lula.

With the change, Zanin did not need to take the place of his predecessor, Ricardo Lewandowski, on the board responsible for Lava Jato. Thus, he avoided the embarrassment of having to declare himself a suspect in trials involving the operation — of which he has always been a critic — that are being processed in the Second Panel. In addition, there are actions in the operation in which the lawyer acted directly.

Toffoli even asked Lula for his “forgiveness” for not having authorized the PT member to attend the wake of his brother, Genival Inácio da Silva, known as Vavá, during his prison term in Curitiba.

Gilmar, in turn, was one of the PT’s main executioners at the beginning of Lava Jato. In March 2016, when then president Dilma Rousseff (PT) saw the climate of impeachment in Congress heating up, the PT member decided to appoint Lula to command the Civil House to try to reverse the unfavorable political scenario.

Lula’s appointment to the government’s main portfolio was Dilma’s last move to improve relations with the Legislature and avoid being removed from office. However, Gilmar made an individual decision and prevented Lula from taking office.

The minister stated at the time that Lula’s inauguration could constitute “a fraud against the Constitution” and a misuse of purpose on Dilma’s part.

This is because, according to the magistrate, there was evidence that Dilma had appointed her co-religionist to the post with the aim of having the investigations against him examined by the Supreme Court and no longer by Sergio Moro, then Lava Jato judge.

In an interview in 2019, in a context of criticism of the operation’s performance, the minister stated that “if Lula took over the Civil House today, he would have many doubts about what decision to take.”

Seven years after the veto on the nomination, Gilmar made a move to get closer to Lula. As the oldest minister, Gilmar spoke on behalf of the court at the inauguration of Luís Roberto Barroso as president of the STF, at the end of September.

In his speech, he praised Bolsa Família and classified Lula as a “great statesman”. Furthermore, he is now trying to influence important appointments that the PT member will make in the Justice system.

He is one of the organizers, alongside STF minister Alexandre de Moraes, of Paulo Gonet Branco’s candidacy for head of the PGR (Attorney General’s Office).

Gilmar also toughened his speech against Bolsonaro. At the beginning of the year, he said that Curitiba, in reference to Lava Jato, “generated Bolsonaro and has the germ of fascism.”

In a debate held in Paris on Saturday (14), the minister defended the role of the STF in defending democracy. “If today we had the election of President Lula [PT]it was thanks to the STF”, he stated.

Although he maintained a close relationship behind the scenes, Gilmar criticized Bolsonaro and his allies during his term, mainly in relation to the federal government’s management of the pandemic.

But even when Gilmar made the harshest criticisms against Bolsonaro, the then president avoided fighting with the magistrate. At the height of the crisis triggered by the spread of Covid-19, when Bolsonaro appointed General Eduardo Pazuello to the Ministry of Health, Gilmar said that the Army was associating itself with a “genocide”.

The active military officer, in addition to heading the department, had appointed 28 military personnel to positions in the body. Soon after the criticism, Bolsonaro instructed Pazuello to look for Gilmar, as reported at the time in the column by journalist Mônica Bergamo, from Sheet.

The relationship between Gilmar and Bolsonaro was evidenced by appointments made by the former president in the legal world.

In April 2022, Bolsonaro appointed Gilmar’s then chief of staff, Victor Fernandes, as an advisor to Cade (Administrative Council for Economic Defense). In 2020, he appointed lawyer Rodrigo Mudrovitsch, who has already acted as Gilmar’s defender in lawsuits, to judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Furthermore, Bolsonaro made a point of taking the then second-instance federal judge Kassio Nunes Marques to meet Gilmar and Toffoli before making his first appointment to the STF official.

A failed articulation by Gilmar to gain an ally in the STJ (Superior Court of Justice) at the end of last year, however, was seen as one of the factors in the minister’s distance from Bolsonaro.

Gilmar worked for the appointment of second instance judge of the TRF-1 (Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region) Ney Bello to the second most important court in the country. Bello, however, had his name vetoed by Minister Nunes Marques, of the STF. Kassio ended up winning the dispute and Gilmar’s ally was left out of the STJ.