The Brazilian Federal Police concluded that President Jair Bolsonaro committed a crime by disclosing secret reports to discredit the country’s electoral system, but 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 disclosure of these documents about some already denied fraud in the 2018 elections had the “purpose” of “disseminating admittedly false information, with harmful repercussions for the administration public”.
Those documents were part of an investigation by the Federal Police into a computer attack on the systems of the Superior Electoral Court that 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 leader of the extreme right disclosed these documents, despite their secret nature, last August, as part of a campaign he unleashed against electronic voting, which Brazil adopted in 1996 and which has not been the subject of a single complaint so far. of fraud but which, according to the president, favors cheating.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes, of the Supreme Court, 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 ordered last week that Bolsonaro give a statement to the Federal Police, after he had repeatedly refused, and ordered him to appear before that institution last Friday.
However, the president did not appear and argued 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 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 status of registered official that protects an incumbent president.
This Tuesday, the president of the Superior Electoral Court and also a member of the Supreme Court, Luis Barroso, referred to the matter and argued 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.
