Toffoli’s request at the STF is seen as a nod to Lula – 05/02/2023 – Politics

The request made by Minister Dias Toffoli to join the Second Panel of the STF (Federal Supreme Court) was seen behind the scenes of the court as an attempt to redeem himself with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and gain prominence.

Minister Rosa Weber, president of the Supreme Court, is expected to assess in the coming days whether to comply with the request of the minister, who wants to leave the First Panel and occupy the vacancy left in the other group by Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, who retired in early April.

For the exchange, the seniority order of the ministers is analyzed. It is authorized when no older colleague shows the same interest, as recalled by Toffoli himself, in a request made on the last 27th to the presidency of the Supreme Court.

In addition to the plenary trial sessions, in which the entire court participates, ministers are divided between two collegiate bodies. They judge cases that do not require the declaration of unconstitutionality of laws. The president does not participate.

In the Second Panel of the Supreme, the group currently comprises ministers Edson Fachin, Gilmar Mendes, Kassio Nunes Marques and André Mendonça.

If authorized, Toffoli’s change could please Lula, as the tendency is for it to facilitate the nomination of lawyer Cristiano Zanin Martins, the president’s favorite, for the vacancy left by Lewandowski on the STF.

Zanin would no longer need to declare himself a suspect in Lava Jato lawsuits being processed by the Second Panel. In addition, there are actions of the operation in which the lawyer acted directly.

The issue of suspicion has even been raised by people close to President Lula. According to the law, a magistrate is barred from trying cases in which he, his spouse or a relative have acted.

Zanin himself was the target of an offshoot of Lava Jato in Rio de Janeiro, in the so-called Operation E$quema $, which investigated suspicions of influence peddling in courts with the diversion of public resources to favor Orlando Diniz, former president of Fecomércio-RJ .

The change, however, would not solve the lawyer’s impediment in the action that deals with hacked data from Lava Jato authorities, in which Zanin acted. As the process involving the material known as Vaza Jato was reported by Lewandowski, he must follow in charge of his successor.

The conversations showed messages that suggested collaboration between the then judge Sergio Moro and the Lava Jato team. The material was cited in the Supreme Court session, which considered that Lula was partially judged by the former magistrate, now a senator.

In one of the actions under Lewandowski’s responsibility, a request by Zanin blocked actions against Lula on the grounds that there was contaminated evidence.

While Lewandowski’s vacancy is not filled, the president of the STF determined that the process be under the rapporteurship of minister Edson Fachin, as he is the immediate senior minister of the Second Panel.

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

Toffoli was appointed to the court in 2009 in Lula’s previous term as president. However, since he started to attend official ceremonies as president-elect, the petista began to avoid a closer relationship with Toffoli.

Among Lula’s sorrows related to the minister, is the episode when he did not authorize the then former president to attend the wake of his brother, Genival Inácio da Silva, Vavá, in 2019. At the time, Lula was arrested in Curitiba.

At the end of 2022, Toffoli asked Lula, already elected, for “forgiveness” for the feat. During the graduation ceremony at the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), the minister of the Supreme would have approached the president and said that he had the right to go to the wake.

Lula would have slapped Toffoli’s hand and told him to be calm that later the two could talk privately.

In 2018, as president of the STF, Toffoli also upheld a decision by his then deputy, Luiz Fux, suspending authorization for Lula, imprisoned in Curitiba, to give interviews.

Lewandowski had authorized the Sheet to interview the former president in prison, following a newspaper request. On the same date, however, Fux suspended the decision, alleging a high risk that the disclosure of the interview with Lula, who had had his candidacy rejected, “would cause misinformation on the eve of the suffrage”.

Toffoli has also been involved in a series of events in recent years that have led to the association of his image with Bolsonarism.

In 2018, during a speech at a seminar on the 30 years of the 1988 Constitution, when talking about the 1964 military coup, Toffoli, then president of the STF, said that today he prefers to refer to the period as the “1964 movement”.

During his tenure as president of the STF, he appointed military personnel as advisors to his cabinet, a measure that was questioned. Generals Fernando Azevedo e Silva and Ajax Porto Pinheiro were two of them.

People close to the minister, however, say that this was not what motivated the exchange request. The Second Panel of the STF is usually the most disputed by ministers who seek more protagonism in the court, as it has processes with greater repercussions.

Behind the scenes, information is also circulating that Minister Gilmar Mendes would have supported Toffoli’s exchange. He has expressed more guarantor positions in criminal actions.

Such a posture would reinforce Gilmar’s team in the Second Panel in the vote scoreboard during the trials, mainly those related to Lava Jato. Gilmar is critical of the operation. He has already stated that “no one has denied” the existence of the scheme, but that it is not right to fight “crime by committing crime”.

Toffoli’s vote in 2019 is also taken into account, when he tied the score in the Supreme Court against prison after the 2nd instance. At the time, the court decided that a convict can only be arrested after the final decision —the end of appeals—, changing the case law that since 2016.