Reports from the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo published on the night of Tuesday (13) and the morning of this Wednesday (14) bring dialogues from direct aides of Alexandre Moraes, Supreme Court minister, according to which he allegedly commissioned reports from the TSE’s misinformation combat unit to support STF decisions regarding the blocking of accounts on social media and the imposition of fines and other sanctions on those involved with certain publications.
According to the newspaper, which claims to have access to 6 gigabytes of digital material, the dialogues were held via WhatsApp between Judge Airton Vieira, an auxiliary judge in the office, and Eduardo Tagliaferro, then head of the Special Advisory for Combating Misinformation, before the 2022 elections, when Moraes was president of the TSE.
Such reports were used to support Moraes’ decisions in the so-called fake news inquiry, opened by the Supreme Court, which targets virtual attacks and threats against the Court’s ministers. The targets of these decisions were supporters of then-re-election candidate Jair Bolsonaro. However, the dispatches do not indicate that such reports were produced at the request of the minister himself.
Still on the night of Tuesday (13), Moraes’ office released a statement regarding the reports. The document states that all procedures carried out to request information from the TSE within the scope of the inquiries investigating the dissemination of fake news and the operation of digital militias during the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro were official and regular.
Minister Flávio Dino, of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), defended Minister Alexandre de Moraes, his colleague in the Supreme Court, on Wednesday morning (14) against claims that he had used the structure of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) “unofficially” to make decisions against targets in the inquiry at the Supreme Federal Court (STF).
Dino rejected any irregularity in Moraes’ procedures, stating that he had “strictly fulfilled his legal duty.” Therefore, he assessed, the matter “will perish like the waves that break against the shore.” The minister asserted that all of his colleague’s actions are supported by the police power that Electoral Justice possesses, allowing for his official actions without being provoked.
“I confess that since the night until now I have not been able to find in which chapter, provision, or precept this violates any type of determination of our legal order,” Dino stated. He expressed confidence that Moraes “walks with a clear conscience for having strictly fulfilled his legal duty.”
Source: Agência Brasil