PGR defends archiving inquiry against Bolsonaro – 02/16/2023 – Power

The PGR (Attorney General of the Republic) defended this Thursday (16) the shelving of an investigation in the STF (Federal Supreme Court) against former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), investigated for falsely associating the vaccine against Covid-19 to HIV.

The statement was sent to Minister Alexandre de Moraes and is signed by Deputy Attorney General, Lindôra Araújo.

In the same broadcast, Bolsonaro said, without providing evidence, that most victims of Spanish flu would not have died from the disease, but from “bacterial pneumonia caused by wearing a mask”.

The investigation also targeted Bolsonaro’s former assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, who had his appointment suspended and could not assume command of the 1st Battalion of Actions and Commands in Goiânia (GO) last month.

The opinion contradicts a report by the Federal Police that, in December last year, concluded the investigations pointing out that Bolsonaro disclosed false information and committed incitement to crime and the misdemeanor of provoking an alarm, announcing disaster or non-existent danger.

At the demonstration, Lindôra says that the investigated facts do not contain the minimum elements that would justify the presentation of a complaint against the former president.

“It turns out that, despite the elements collected during the investigation, it has not been demonstrated that the statements made by the then President of the Republic, with the participation of Mauro Cesar Barbosa Cid, produced or had the capacity to produce panic or turmoil in the population”, said Lindôra.

“In other words, during the criminal investigation, evidence was not collected in the sense that the statements made by Jair Messias Bolsonaro caused alarm in the population or that, at least, they had the capacity to do so”, says the opinion of the PGR.

According to Lindôra, although objectionable, Bolsonaro’s lines reinforce a “standard of conduct” that would be in line with his “political action” since the beginning of the pandemic. Therefore, according to the deputy PGR, there would be no intention of the former president to generate panic in the population.

“The questioned speeches, if they deserve criticism, should be subject to political and electoral debate, but not criminal, given their fragmentary nature and only incident when the violation or putting at risk of the relevant legal interest is clear”, he said. “Therefore, the investigated conducts, at least with the accumulated evidence, did not fulfill the contours of the criminal types pointed out by the police authority”.

The Deputy PGR also states that, as there is no further action to be investigated, the investigation must be archived due to the absence of just cause for filing a complaint and the atypicality of the conduct investigated.

In recent months, the PGR filed the findings derived from the Covid CPI in the Senate, alleging a lack of evidence to justify the filing of a complaint.

In the report delivered to the STF last year, the PF says that it summoned Bolsonaro both via the AGU (Attorney General of the Union) and through his office in the Presidency to provide information on the case.

Bolsonaro, however, did not respond to the subpoena on time and the PF considered that the president chose to remain silent.