The Brazilian Federal Police concluded that President Jair Bolsonaro committed a crime by disclosing secret reports to discredit the country’s electoral system, although he left a possible accusation in the hands of the Attorney General’s Office. According to a document sent this Wednesday to the Supreme Court, which is investigating the matter, the dissemination of these documents on an already denied fraud in the 2018 elections had the “purpose” of “dissemination of admittedly false information, with harmful repercussions for the public administration”.
The documents were part of a Federal Police investigation into a computer attack to the systems of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) occurred in mid-2018, months before the elections in October of that same year, won by Bolsonaro and which were not affected by that incident. The far-right leader disclosed these documents, despite their secret nature, last August, as part of a campaign he unleashed against the electronic votingthat Brazil adopted in 1996 and that until now has not been the object of a single complaint of fraud but that, according to the president, favors cheating.
The magistrate of the Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes, included this matter in a process on the dissemination of false news and attacks on institutions and determined that the Federal Police investigate the president’s attitude. the same judge had ordered last week that Bolsonaro give a statement to the Federal Policeafter he repeatedly refused, and summoned him to appear last Friday before that institution.
But nevertheless, the president did not appear and claimed his “right to absence”although the matter has not yet been fully clarified in the legal sphere, since the Supreme Court must analyze the consequences of a head of state ignoring a court order.
The document sent this Wednesday by the Federal Police says that, despite having verified that Bolsonaro committed a “crime”, a possible formal accusation should be presented by the Attorney General’s Office, due to the immunity that protects a president in office. The president of the TSE and also a member of the Supreme Court, Louis Barrosoreferred to the matter and maintained that the “manipulated” dissemination of these secret reports was a “help for digital militias and hackers” dedicated to “criminal attacks” against the country’s democratic institutions.
With the denunciation of the alleged fraud, Bolsonaro launched a campaign against electronic ballot boxes ahead of the elections in October this year in which he will seek a second term, although the polls place him behind the former president and leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In August of last year, the president used an interview on social networks to publicize the text of an investigation by the Federal Police that was investigating a possible attack on the internal system of the TSE in the 2018 elections.
The electoral court assured that this attack did not pose any risk to the presidential elections of that year, and that Bolsonaro won in the second round. The president made that statement in the framework of his claim for Parliament to approve the printed vote for the next elections, which he finally lost..