Christian Zanin47, the lawyer who defeated the lawfare of Operation Lava Jato and achieved the annulment of the causes and the release from prison of President Luiz Inácio Lula da SIlva, was elected this Wednesday by an overwhelming majority of the Senate as the new judge of the Federal Supreme Court, the highest court of Brazil.
After 10 hours of deliberations, the Brazilian Senate approved the appointment of Zanin, proposed by Lula, by 58 in favor and 18 against.
With the appointment, Zanin, trained at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC), will occupy the eleventh chair of the high court, replacing the retired Ricardo Lewandowskiand in this way Lula managed to place his personal lawyer on the last rung of the Judiciary who specialized in the theoretical and practical framework of “lawfare”, the use of the public machinery of the Judiciary and the prosecution to install in public opinion the political persecution of those accused of committing crimes.
“I will not be subordinate to anyone, just to the Constitution,” he assured before the Constitution and Justice Commission of the Senate in the face of attacks by senators from the Bolsonaro opposition, including his former great enemy, Senator Sérgio Morothe Lava Jato judge who accused and imprisoned Lula and was later declared biased by the supreme federal court, which annulled the proceedings against the current president.
During the interpellation in the session of the Senate, the moment of greatest tension was experienced when Zanin had to face Moro, whom he had seen in the historic hearings in which Lula was sitting in the dock in the Curitiba courts, between 2016 and 2018.
Moro assured that Zanin should declare himself incompetent when Lava Jato cases come to court because he participated as Lula’s defender in this process. Zanin responded that he will analyze each case to declare himself incompetent and to avoid judging those in which he has already acted as defense attorney so as not to mix interests.
Former judge Moro brought the “fake news” to the premises: he asked Zanin if he had been the godfather of Lula’s marriage to Janja da Silva in May 2022 and that this information had been found on Google. Zanin denied having been the best man at the wedding because there were no godparents at that wedding.
But Zanin went to the heart of the lawfare exercised by Lava Jato and defended being a “guarantor” and being against the spectacularization of Justice.
“A judge is not the protagonist, he should not be the protagonist of the trial, but rather someone who with balance and temperance can gather arguments within the process to give his decision, always following the Constitution, the laws and the existing evidence. Care must be taken to that the voice of public opinion is not a decisive voice in judging a process or a cause”, he assured.
“Impartiality is fundamental for a judge,” he told Moro, whom the Federal Supreme Court described as biased. Court judge Gilmar Mendes had described the author as a sort of “Stasi” to achieve rewarded accusations against Moro for his work at the head of Lava Jato, with supra-constitutional powers.
Senator Eduardo Braga, of the Brazilian Democracy Movement, and Bolsonaro Jorge Seif, of the Progressive Party, recalled that having been Lula’s personal lawyer does not object to taking office in court. Both gave as an example that Fernando Collor de Mello put his cousin in court and that Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Michel Temer put Treasury lawyers.
Considering the current rules, Zanin will stay on court until 2050 without having previously been a member of the state apparatus.
Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, praised Zanin’s guarantee and criticized in his speech the “activist” actions of Supreme Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who is carrying out proceedings against his father, from fake news to coup and electoral crimes.
Zanin was chosen by Lula to be his defender in 2016 when, on the verge of the fall of Dilma Rousseff, Moro ordered Lula to be forcibly interrogated at the Congonhas airport, in São Paulo.
Zanin is a civil and administrative lawyer and had dedicated himself to millionaire processes of companies in the study of Roberto Teixeira, founder of the PT and lawyer linked to Lula for four decades.
Married to Valeska Teixeira, daughter of Roberto, Zanin was chosen by Lula due to the profile chosen for the defense. Lula himself said it. “I love Zanin because he is not a criminal lawyer, we innocent people do not use criminal lawyers,” Lula said at the moment when Lava Jato appeared as a powerful judicial arm that, with the corruption in Petrobras, decapitated the PT and allowed the rise of figures from the far right like former President Jair Bolsonaro.
In 2018, after Bolsonaro’s victory and with Lula in jail, Moro resigned from the magistracy to be Minister of Justice and have the chance to be a candidate for the court, something that did not happen due to his differences with the far-right leader.
The law firm of Zanin and his wife Valeska says on its website that the two are “specialists in dealing with lawfare, an illegitimate way of using the law that has been adopted by some national and international authorities to obtain political, geopolitical, economic and military”.
Pro-government senator Randolphe Rodrigues compared Zanin to Nelson Mandela’s lawyer at the 1963 Rivonia trials that convicted the South African leader but managed to avoid a death sentence. “Zanin showed Brazilian society precepts such as the right to legal process, the right to defense… When many knelt to punitiveness, Zanín defended rights and went to the UN to denounce it. Punitiveness opened wings to fascism and we have a a lawyer who not only guarantees, but who relies on the Constitution”, assured Rodrigues.
During questioning in the Senate, Zanin expressed the situation in Brazilian prisons with the third largest prison population in the world as problematic, defended the demarcation of indigenous lands and homosexual unions. But it also marked a differential over the current moment in which the Bolsonaristas maintain that the coup leaders of January 8 should be released for being “patriots.” “I defend the Constitution, my side is the Constitution, the other is barbarism,” Zanin asserted.