Bolsonaro should not testify at the PF this Friday, sources say

President Jair Bolsonaro

By Ricardo Brito and Lisandra Paraguassu

BRASILIA (Reuters) – President Jair Bolsonaro is not expected to testify to the Federal Police in Brasilia at 2 pm on Friday in the inquiry into a leak of a classified investigation, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The day before, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), had ordered Bolsonaro to testify in the investigation after he had not scheduled his testimony for 60 days.

One of the sources told Reuters that the president’s defense should be based on the precedent set by the Supreme Court in the two lawsuits to opt out. In these actions, proposed by the PT and the OAB, the STF declared coercive conduct unconstitutional.

Interestingly, these two precedents were established by the court after the then judge Sergio Moro had ordered the coercive conduct of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the Lava Jato operation. Bolsonaro, Lula and Moro should now be opponents in the electoral dispute in October.

An open question is if Bolsonaro does not appear for the deposition, he could be indicted for a crime of disobedience.

On another front, according to a second source, the Attorney General’s Office is discussing whether to appeal the decision of the STF minister to the Supreme Court. In the assessment of this source, there would be a procedural grievance for the plenary to assess this situation.

The expectation is that this may occur on the afternoon of this Friday, as the Supreme Court resumes activities next week after the end of the Judiciary recess.

SURVEY

The investigation investigates the leak of a confidential investigation by the Federal Police regarding a hacker attack suffered by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

This investigation was opened by Moraes after Bolsonaro published on his social media information from the confidential investigation into the hacker attack against the TSE in 2018, months before the elections that year. The attack had no effect on that year’s elections.

In early August, the president used the contents of that inquiry to challenge – without any kind of evidence – the country’s electronic voting system. According to him, the system would be susceptible to fraud – a fact that has never been proven.