Senate Committee approves Cristiano Zanin for the STF – 06/21/2023 – Power

By 21 votes to 5, the CCJ (Constitution and Justice Commission) of the Senate approved the name of Cristiano Zanin, 47, for the STF (Federal Supreme Court).

Zanin is the first nominee by Lula (PT) in the current term and is a friend of the president, for whom he advocated in the actions of Operation Lava Jato. Now, the approval will be analyzed in the plenary of the Senate.

Proximity to the president raised criticism of the nomination among opponents and in circles in the legal world, but the lawyer has the sympathy of STF ministers and a large number of politicians.

If approved, Zanin will be able to stay on the STF until November 2050, when he turns 75, the compulsory retirement age for court ministers. He will occupy the vacancy of retired Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.

Over the past week, Lula’s nominee toured the Senate offices to approach parliamentarians and garner support even among evangelicals and opponents of the current government.

The meeting went smoothly and the lawyer was praised, even by opponents of the president. Senators manifested themselves positively, above all, to Zanin’s guarantor profile —that is, that it reinforces the right to full defense of accused and investigated.

With part of the senators being investigated and another part seeking shielding to avoid legal problems, the assessment in recent months was that the legal stance of carefully observing respect for the guarantees of those being investigated would have great weight in the vote of parliamentarians.

Such as Sheet showed, almost half of the current composition of the Senate has already been the subject of investigation or criminal proceedings conducted by the Supreme Court.

In his opening speech, before starting the questioning stage in this Wednesday’s Saturday, Zanin defended himself against being called Lula’s “personal lawyer” and “luxury lawyer”.

“I’m a lawyer. Some label me a personal lawyer, because I fought against personal interests, always respecting Brazilian laws and the Constitution,” he said.

“I am also classified as a luxury lawyer, because I defended, strictly based on Brazilian law, business cases of institutional agents that are important for the economy and that employ thousands of people. They still call me a lawyer by trade, as if it were a demerit.”

Questioned by Senator Veneziano Vital do Rêgo (MDB-PB) if the fact that he was Lula’s lawyer could embarrass him in judgment or compromise his impartiality, Zanin said that, once appointed, he will be guided by the Constitution and will not be subordinated ” to whoever.”

“In my view, and I believe it is also the view of the President of the Republic who indicated me, a minister of the Federal Supreme Court can only be subordinate to the Constitution of the Republic,” he said.

The lawyer told Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR) that he will analyze the Lava Jato processes on a case-by-case basis before declaring himself prevented or suspected.

The expected interaction between the two on the Sabbath revolved around the possibility of the lawyer judging the operation’s processes and it went smoothly.

Zanin and Moro have been at odds since the lawyer defended Lula in Lava Jato, of which Moro was a judge.

“In the recent past, almost everything that worked in specialized criminal courts often received the Lava Jato label. This is not for me a criterion for legal control, but one that the law provides for, which is to analyze the parties and the content,” he said.

“Once a hypothesis of impediment and suspicion is identified, I will not have the slightest problem in declaring the impediment or suspicion and not participating in the trial.”

During his career as Lula’s lawyer, Zanin became known for questioning the impartiality of the judges who tried cases against the president, often pointing out what he considered to be suspicious relationships.

Lula had convictions annulled because the Supreme Court considered former judge Sergio Moro partial, based on an appeal filed by Zanin.

In the articulation to be approved, the lawyer had the help of STF ministers who have a good relationship with the political world, such as Gilmar Mendes and Alexandre de Moraes, and even former president Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) nominees for the court, such as Kassio Nunes Marques and André Mendonça.

On Saturday, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) used his speech to criticize the trial of his father Jair Bolsonaro at the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) and the inquiry opened by Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

One of the questions asked this Wednesday (21st) by Flávio was about what Zanin thinks of the “famous practice of ‘fishing expedition'”. “It is fishing, as it is called in the legal world, in which you throw a net, pull it and see what is caught in it, even without any foundation”, explained the term.

“You know how it is, when you say you’re going to get the vaccination card at someone’s house to get the cell phone?”, he continued.

Flávio’s reference is to the investigation into fraud in Bolsonaro’s vaccination card, which seized the cell phone of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, who was the former president’s assistant.

In response, Zanin said that the fishing expedition should be condemned. “The state cannot elect someone as a target and then seek evidence against that target,” he said, adding that this practice has led to mistrials.

Flávio also compared the process that could lead to his father’s ineligibility at the TSE, about the meeting with ambassadors in which he repeated lies about electronic voting machines, to the one that acquitted the ticket Dilma Rousseff (PT) and Michel Temer (MDB) in 2017.

“I want to believe that the TSE, in particular Minister Alexandre de Moraes, will judge a lawsuit filed by the PDT with the same fairness that judged the PSDB lawsuit in 2017, which kept Temer in power and, thanks to that, Alexandre de Moraes is today Minister of the Federal Supreme Court,” he added.

And he asked: “Do you understand that processes filed without due legal process, contradictory or with evidence beyond the legal deadline are subject to nullity?”.

Zanin said he does not know the specific case and would not comment. But he added that “in general, the processes have a rite and each phase that is closed cannot be reopened”.

Zanin became known in his career mainly for his fierce defense of Lula. He ended up becoming a target, including the PT itself, for his strategy during the president’s 580-day imprisonment.

Since the beginning of this year, Lula has already shown signs that he would nominate Zanin to the court. When announcing his choice, the president said he thought “everyone expected” that the lawyer would be chosen.

“[Indiquei] not only because of the role he played in my defense, but simply because I think Zanin will become a great minister of the Supreme Court of this country”, said the president.

“I know his qualities as a lawyer, I know his qualities as a head of family and I know his background. He will be an exceptional minister of the STF if approved by the Senate, and I believe he will be, and I think Brazil will be proud to have Zanin as a minister of the Supreme Court,” he said.