PF used statements against fake news about Bolsonarism – 03/17/2024 – Power

Questions made by the Federal Police to those investigated for the attempted coup d’état in 2022 aimed to dismantle a series of fraudulent news fed by allies of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) during his term in office.

This fake news, which was intensified during the then president’s re-election attempt, ranges from unfounded information about electronic voting machines and links between President Lula (PT) and organized crime.

Bodies of the federal government itself and the former president’s party inflamed the Bolsonarist networks with this type of unproven data, in an attempt to give them legitimacy.

In the statements, the PF points out the use of the corporation itself by the Bolsonaro government to validate false information on the eve of the 2022 election.

At the time, investigators say, the police opened an investigative procedure to find out whether money from drug trafficking had supplied Lula and other left-wing government officials for ten years.

Former Justice Minister Anderson Torres was asked about the reason for opening these procedures and said he did not know why.

This investigation opened by the PF under Bolsonaro came from publications circulating on Bolsonaro networks, regarding the alleged denunciation of a former Venezuelan intelligence general accused of participating in a drug cartel.

In 2021, this general was imprisoned in Spain and said, in a letter to a local judge, that left-wing parties in Latin America and Europe received illegal funding from Venezuela, but he did not present evidence.

The Venezuelan general ended up extradited to the United States and declared himself innocent, and there is no record that he closed a plea or spoke about Lula’s 2022 campaign, as fact-checking agencies point out.

Even so, Bolsonaro himself even mentioned the alleged whistleblowing during the ministerial meeting in July 2022. Torres was at the meeting with Bolsonaro and said, when speaking, that “everyone will fuck themselves” if Lula won the election.

The PF questions the former minister whether he was the one who passed on the information to Lula about the alleged denunciation of the Venezuelan general imprisoned in Spain. Torres denied this and said that Bolsonaro did not demand action from the Ministry of Justice on the matter.

The former minister also denies having proof of another accusation he made at the meeting: that the PT had links with the criminal faction PCC. He attributes his speech to news that publicist Marcos Valério had said this in a plea bargain agreement.

Another issue addressed with insistence by the Federal Police in the statements was the security of electronic voting machines and the attempts to disqualify the results of the 2022 elections.

Questions were asked on the topic to those investigated such as Torres, the president of the PL, Valdemar Costa Neto, and the businessman who collaborated with the PL’s audit of electronic voting machines.

Tércio Arnaud, appointed as the leader of Bolsonaro’s so-called “hate office”, was also questioned about the matter.

Because of a meeting with ambassadors in which he repeated attacks and lies about the electoral system, Bolsonaro has already been convicted by the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), in addition to being the target of different other investigations at the STF. Right now, he is ineligible until at least 2030.

The PL endorsed Bolsonaro’s coup speech after his defeat in the 2022 elections and asked the TSE, even without presenting evidence of fraud, to invalidate votes cast in ballot boxes due to “malfunctioning”.

The party used as a basis for representation a report from the Instituto Voto Legal, hired by the PL for R$1 million to carry out studies on the functioning of the ballot boxes.

When testifying to the Federal Police, Valdemar Costa Neto stated that he hired the institute and questioned the ballot boxes in the Electoral Court under pressure from Bolsonaro and his allies. He said that the institute never found irregularities — which contradicts his previous public statements.

Also heard by the PF, businessman Eder Balbino, who collaborated with the PL audit that requested the cancellation of part of the 2022 votes, said that he found no signs of fraud in the electronic voting machines.

“In view of the data he received, he saw absolutely nothing that hinted at any fraud in the 2022 Brazilian elections, despite having no in-depth knowledge of ballot boxes, elections, that kind of thing,” the businessman told the police on February 22.

The businessman said he sent an email to Carlos Rocha, president of the Instituto Voto Legal, disagreeing with the conclusions of the report used by the PL to try to change the results of the elections.

“You understand that the system failure, which did not identify the log number, was not enough to attribute fraud in the elections”, records the statement to the PF.

The Federal Police were not always able to extract this type of speech from those questioned. Tércio Arnaud, for example, was asked if he believes there was fraud in the 2022 presidential elections and if he thinks the Judiciary acted in a biased manner.

He told investigators he “desires not to respond to this inquiry.”

In his statement, the former presidential advisor simply claims that he did not watch videos of fake news about the elections, such as that of an Argentine influencer, or that he did not directly participate in the creation of misleading information.

Others investigated remained silent, such as Bolsonaro himself and former ministers Walter Braga Netto and Augusto Heleno.