TSE denies request to draw draft of investigation coup – 02/07/2023 – Power

The Electoral Corregidor General, Minister Benedito Gonçalves, denied the request made by former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) for the draft of the state of defense decree at the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) to be excluded from the action in which he is investigated for attacks on ballot boxes while speaking to ambassadors.

The decision was taken this Tuesday (7), in response to an appeal made by the defense of the former president and the vice president on his ticket in the 2022 elections, Walter Braga Netto.

The document was included by the minister in a decision on January 16, in response to a request from the PDT, the author of the action.

The measurement took place after Sheet reveal, on January 12, that the Federal Police had found the draft of the decree in the residence of Anderson Torres, former Minister of Justice. The objective of the document would be to reverse the result of the election in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) won. Such a measure would be unconstitutional.

Bolsonaro’s and Braga Netto’s lawyers argued that joining the document in the lawsuit against Bolsonaro would represent “the admission of a new fact, and not a new document, at such an advanced stage of the procedural march”.

They also claimed that the draft does not represent proof for the resolution of the cause, “since it is apocryphal”, which was not found in the possession of the investigated and is not signed by them.

In addition, he argued that there was no evidence that the duo had participated in its drafting or that they had acted “so that the measures supposedly intended by the document were materialized”.

The minister, however, maintained that the document is connected to the initial allegations of the author of the action, in the sense that Bolsonaro’s speech at the meeting with ambassadors “was part of the campaign strategy consisting of casting serious and unfounded suspicions on the electronic system of vote.”

“This defense strategy, as can be easily seen, seeks to deflate the legitimate vocation of the action to protect very complex legal interests, such as isonomy, electoral normality and the legitimacy of the results”, said Gonçalves.

The magistrate also said that due legal process has, among its virtues, the ability to decant the facts and enable their analytical examination and that the results of the 2022 presidential elections, “although a legitimate and authentic result of the popular will manifested in the ballot boxes, became the target of severe threats”.

“It is central to the consolidation of the results of the 2022 Elections to find out whether this desolate scenario is a result of conduct imputed to Jair Messias Bolsonaro, then President of the Republic, and his surroundings. This debate cannot be silenced or inhibited by an artificial separation of the causes of ask in the various AIJEs (Electoral Judicial Investigation Action)”, said the minister.

He added that anti-democratic acts and conspiracies have become commonplace and that they are regrettable weapons of coup d’état by those who refuse to accept the prevalence of popular sovereignty and who are betting on the collapse of institutions to create a world of chaos where they hope to impose themselves by force.

“The unfortunate finding is that, although it is rigorous to say that the diploma concludes the electoral process, a climate of coup articulation still surrounds the 2022 Elections. January”.

He also mentioned the coup plan to record Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court, in a message that would have been sent to Senator Marcos do Val (Podemos-ES).

“In addition to the plan to spy on and record the conversation of the president of the TSE without authorization, the concealment of public reports that attested to the fairness of the elections and the party sponsorship of ‘parallel auditing’ and other frivolous procedural adventures, all to maintain a base society in a permanent state of antagonism with the Electoral Justice, without any plausible reason”, he said.

In his decision, the minister also assured the parties of the process to carry out oral support and submitted his decision to confirmation in plenary of the TSE.