TSE minister includes draft coup decree in inquiry against Bolsonaro

The Electoral Corregidor General, Minister Benedito Gonçalves, included the draft of a decree for Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to establish a state of defense at the headquarters of the Superior Electoral Court in an action in which the former president is investigated for attacks on the ballot boxes in a speech to ambassadors.

This Monday’s decision (16) responds to a request from the PDT, which, last Friday, filed a petition for the document to be attached to the investigations regarding the meeting with foreign representatives in which the then Chief Executive attacked the electoral system.

On Thursday (12), as revealed by Folha de S.Paulo, the Federal Police found the draft of the decree at 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.

The PDT argued that the draft found would be an “embryo conceived with the intention of a coup d’état”, being capable of “densifying the arguments that show the occurrence of abuse of political power tending to discredit this Electoral Justice and the electoral process, with a view to to alter the outcome of the election”.

In the decision, the minister stated that the facts presented by the party “have adherence” with the event held for ambassadors, “especially with regard to the correlation of the speech with the election and the quantitative aspect of gravity”.

“As can be seen, the thesis of the plaintiff, from the beginning, is that the speech made on 07/18/2022 was not aimed only at the ambassadors, as it would be inserted in the campaign strategy of the first investigated to ‘mobilize their bases’ through knowingly false facts about the voting system”, wrote the minister.

“In the petition now under analysis, it alleges that the draft of the State of Defense decree, by materializing the proposal to change the result of the election, ‘denses the arguments that show the occurrence of abuse of political power tending to discredit this Electoral Justice and to the electoral process’.”

Gonçalves stated that there is “an unmistakable correlation between new facts and documents and stabilized demand”.

According to the minister, the PDT “converges with its burden of convincing that, in line with the narrative presented in the initial petition, the meeting held with the ambassadors must be analyzed as an element of the 2022 electoral campaign, endowed with sufficient gravity to affect normality and the legitimacy of the elections and, thus, configure abuse of political power and misuse of the media.”

The minister gave three days for Bolsonaro and the deputy on his ticket, General Walter Braga Netto, to demonstrate and also asked Minister Alexandre de Moraes, president of the TSE, to send an official copy of the draft of the coup decree seized by the PF in the house of Anderson Torres, “as well as other documents and information resulting from the search and seizure that relate to the 2022 electoral process, in particular aimed at delegitimizing the results.”

The three-page coup draft, made on a computer and found in the former minister’s closet during a search and seizure carried out last Tuesday (10). The PF will investigate the circumstances of the preparation of the proposal.

The material appears to have been produced after the elections and was intended to investigate abuse of power, suspicion and illegal measures adopted by the TSE presidency before, during and after the process.

In August last year, the PDT asked the TSE to make President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and General Braga Netto (PL) ineligible for the meeting with foreign ambassadors in which the Chief Executive attacked the electoral system.

Bolsonaro repeated conspiracy theories about the polls to try to delegitimize the electoral process in front of ambassadors. At this ceremony, the president made new coup-innuendos and attacks on the TSE and the STF.

In the action, the PDT said it was “undeniable” that Bolsonaro used the meeting to “spread the recording of the speech for electoral purposes”. The party also declares that the attacks on the electronic voting system and on the Electoral Justice are part of the president’s campaign strategy.