PF links Bolsonaro vaccine to digital militias for action to stay with Moraes

The Federal Police (PF) request that led Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), to order a search and seizure against former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), for alleged participation in the insertion of false vaccination data against Covid at the Ministry of Health, pointed out a possible link between the suspects and groups that led demonstrations in favor of the government on September 7, 2021. The act featured protests against the STF, the minister himself and also against electronic ballot boxes. Therefore, the PF asked that the new case be investigated by Moraes within the scope of the “digital militias” inquiry.

The case should also be processed by the STF, according to the PF, because the investigation found that federal deputy Gutemberg Reis (MDB-RJ) would also have benefited from the counterfeiting scheme. He was also the target of search and seizure this Wednesday (3).

The digital militias inquiry was opened by Moraes in 2021, after the archiving, at the request of the PGR, of the inquiry into “anti-democratic acts”. Since then, it has been used by Moraes to investigate various facts related to a group linked to the former president that would promote, on social media, “attacks” on institutions.

To maintain the case of the vaccination card with Moraes, the PF stated that there would now be a “realization in the real world of the objectives” of this group, “overflowing its performance beyond the virtual sphere”. “Whether on social networks, whether in inserting false vaccination data against Covid-19, or in planning a coup d’état, the element that unites its members is always present, that is, the action to protect and ensure the permanence in power of people who represent the professed ideology”.

Then, he mentions the so-called “hate office”, which is how Bolsonaro’s opponents refer to a group of presidential advisors who defended the government and criticized opponents on the networks. Those investigated in the case of falsifying vaccine receipts, however, are different: basically, military personnel who held positions as assistants to the former president. Even so, the delegate of the case, Fábio Shor, pointed out a relationship due to the “dissemination of false news involving the pandemic and attacks on vaccination against covid-19”.

“The criminal structure created in the municipality of Duque de Caxias/RJ was used to allow people from the circle close to the former President of the Republic Jair Bolsonaro to circumvent the health rules imposed in the Covid-19 Pandemic and, on the other hand, to keep the identity element of the group in relation to its ideological guidelines, in this case, to support the speech aimed at the attacks on vaccination against Covid-19”, says the PF request, signed by Shor.

“The refusal to bear the burden of opposing vaccination, associated with the need to maintain rigid, before its followers, the professed ideology (not taking a vaccine against Covid-19), motivated the series of criminal conducts perpetrated”, added the delegate right away.

Maintenance of the case with Moraes

One of the main targets of the PF investigation is Colonel Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s direct assistant in the Presidency and a trusted man who took care of the former president’s personal affairs. In 2021, according to investigations, Cid would have triggered servers to enter false vaccination data in favor of his wife and, later, articulate the same device for other Bolsonaro helpers, so that they could travel abroad. The investigation found that, at the end of last year, information was entered into the Ministry of Health’s system that the former president and his daughter, Laura, would also have been vaccinated, which did not occur.

In an attempt to justify continuing the case with Moraes, Shor also said, in the search and seizure request, that the “digital militia” would also be linked to demonstrations at the doors of barracks that protested against the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, resulting, in Brasilia, in the invasion of the seats of Powers on January 8th. The case is also being investigated by Moraes at the STF.

The PF request relates the case of false vaccination data to the so-called digital militias by citing audio messages and text messages from the cell phone of Ailton Gonçalves Barros, a lawyer and former military man who would also have participated in the fraud of the immunization registration system. The PF says that conversations captured on its WhatsApp “found that the investigated was close to members of groups that led the demonstrations that took place on September 7, possibly in the year 2021, making himself available to insert guidelines of attack on the STF, on the Minister Alexandre de Moraes and the electronic voting system”.

“The images captured from dialogues even indicate that Ailton Barros exchanged messages on the aforementioned topics with the contact registered as ‘PR01’, called by the investigated person ‘PR’, possibly referring to the former President of the Republic Jair Messias Bolsonaro, revealing his performance as one of the propagators of the ideology professed by the digital militia investigated in the records of Inq. 4874/DF”, says the PF, referring to the inquiry of the digital militias.

By complying with the PF’s request, Moraes considered that the conduct of Bolsonaro’s assistants is “illicit and very serious”, as “they sought, by illicit means, the benefits arising from the public vaccination policy”. For the minister, there would be a criminal organization “with division of tasks and multiple objectives, both in the particular scope of those investigated, and in aspects related to the public interest, to the detriment of the internal and external credibility of the exemplary national vaccination control in the middle of the pandemic period “. Therein lies the connection, in Moraes’ view, with the fake news and digital militia surveys.

In Moraes’ view, Bolsonaro’s involvement would be in the “notorious public position of the politician against vaccination and the ongoing investigation in the CPI of the Pandemic and in the Supreme Court”. Thus, it would be “plausible and logical” the investigative line that investigates the possibility of the former president, in a veiled way, “having sought advantages for himself and for third parties through the insertion of false data in the SUS systems, aiming at effective immunization, especially considered the fact of not having been re-elected in the 2022 General Elections”.