Former Brazilian lawmaker Roberto Jefferson, already serving house arrest under charges of propagating “fake news,” attacked police with a grenade on Sunday as they attempted to place him in custody.
Brazil’s top court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), ordered Jefferson’s arrest in response to a video uploaded to social media in which he insulted Supreme Court Justice Cármen Lúcia for voting to limit the impact of news coverage detrimental to socialist ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, currently running for president again. Jefferson referred to Lucia as a “vagabond,” “prostitute,” and “Blair witch,” which STF leader Alexandre de Moraes – Brazil’s top anti-“fake news” crusader – deemed a violation of his terms of house arrest.
Lula da Silva appointed Cármen Lúcia to the STF.
The dramatic episode – the latest in a string of insulting, strange, and allegedly corrupt behavior for Jefferson – prompted condemnation from President Jair Bolsonaro, currently in a dead heat for reelection against Lula. Bolsonaro called Jefferson a “bandit” and “criminal” in a video posted to his social media profiles late on Sunday, expressing solidarity with the police officers injured on the job.
Jefferson is a member and former leader of the center-left Brazilian Labor Party (PTB) who served in the Brazilian Congress through 2005, when he was expelled on charges of corruption. The PTB has long opposed Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT), a far-left radical organization, and Jefferson himself has expressed support for Bolsonaro, though Bolsonaro has attempted to maintain a distance.
Sunday’s grenade attack was preceded by a wave of censorship by the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which de Moraes also controls. The television network Jovem Pan denounced last week that it had been under a censorship regime that prevented it from discussing Lula’s arrest and conviction on charges of using bribes to buy a luxury real estate property while he served as president (between 2003 and 2011).
“We cannot, in our programming – on radio, on TV, and on digital platforms – speak about the facts involving the conviction of Workers’ Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,” Jovem Pan revealed in a public statement. “The context doesn’t matter; the determination of the Tribunal is that these issues cannot be addressed in the journalistic programming of the station. Censorship.”
Lula’s arrest occurred as part of “Operation Car Wash,” a police operation into a sprawling corruption operation in which private contractors overcharged the government, at the time under Lula, for public works projects, then kicked back some of the funds in the form of bribes. Lula was among dozens of politicians of nearly every political party implicated in the affair; as one of the few uninvolved, Bolsonaro won the 2018 presidential election riding a wave of public outrage.
Lula was sentenced to 25 years in prison before de Moraes’ STF voted to overturn the conviction on the grounds that the process was “biased” and allow him to run for president again last year.
De Moraes’ TSE also announced last week that the Bolsonaro campaign could not refer to Lula as “corrupt” or a “thief” without incurring onerous fines.
Lula’s campaign has focused, rather than on Bolsonaro’s presidential record, accusing him of cannibalism and pedophilia. The TSE has taken only mild steps towards blocking slanderous Lula advertising referring to Bolsonaro’s alleged cannibalism.
Jefferson was arrested and imprisoned last year on charges of “digital attacks against democracy” for allegedly running a social media account that insulted government officials. One of the conditions of his arrest was for him to stay off social media.
This weekend, his daughter, Cristiane Brasil, published a video of Jefferson objecting to censorship of Jovem Pan and particularly to Cármen Lúcia’s vote in favor of the censorship. Jefferson referred to the STF justice as “Cármen Lucifer,” a “prostitute,” and other epithets:
De Moraes rapidly issued a statement vowing that he would “combat intolerance, violence, hate, discrimination, and misogyny,” denouncing them as “enemies of Democracy.” Hours later, police arrived at Jefferson’s home to apprehend him. Jefferson reportedly responded by opening fire and hurling at least one grenade at police, injuring two officers.
Bolsonaro aggressively distanced himself from Jefferson, initially in response to the Cármen Lúcia video and later condemning him as a “criminal.”
“The treatment for someone who assaults police [should be] that of a bandit,” Bolsonaro said in a video posted to social media on Sunday night, offering “my solidarity for the police.” Bolsonaro, a retired military serviceman, has traditionally enjoyed high support among federal police officers:
De Moraes’ orders against Jefferson mirror past attempts at censorship that went as far as the arrest and sentencing of a Brazilian congressman to prison for questioning the wisdom of the nation’s top court. In April, now-former Congressman Daniel Silveira was sentenced to eight years in prison for a Youtube video in which he said the STF had “no character, no scruples, no morals” and that he had imagined an STF justice “taking a beating.”
Silveira locked himself in his congressional office prior to his arrest, forcing police to abide by legislative immunity rules, for nearly a day before surrendering to authorities after de Moraes imposed onerous daily fines that Silveira said would have been unfair to his family to incur.
Bolsonaro pardoned Silveira, leading the Brazilian left to demand that Congress strip Bolsonaro of his presidential pardon powers.
De Moraes was also responsible for an alarming wave of police raids in 2020 against alleged “fake news” purveyors on the Internet, most of them Bolsonaro supporters. On the list the U.K. Guardian detailed at the time of people suffering violent news raids for supporting Bolsonaro were:
an eclectic and influential cast of hardcore Bolsonaristas including a former Femen activist-turned-anti-abortion-militant; a comic and musician whose repertoire includes a sexually explicit JK Rowling parody called “Harry Fucker”; a gun-toting, communist-bashing congressman; a hard-right blogger; and a multimillionaire retail magnate famed for placing giant replicas of the Statue of Liberty outside his stores.
Bolsonaro and Lula are currently in a technical tie leading into the October 30 presidential election, according to the latest polls released this week.
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