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by andrenth 800 days ago
Yeah right. Appeal to the same court that opened the illegal inquiry. Good luck indeed.

What a vibrant democracy!

1 comments

There is nothing ilegal in the inquiry.
There are at least 8 reasons it is illegal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

As already mentioned, the first item is false.

The second is also false: if you perform an attack against the supreme court, in an coup attempt, or if you menace ministers, or the judges of supreme court, it is the supreme court that will handle the case. Likewise, if I say that I will kill all judges in the world, if I am persecuted for this, I cannot use as defense the fact that no judge can judge me because they were the victims of my menace.

It is also false that inquiry 4874 do not specify a crime to investigate. Menacing ministers, unbased defamation or lies about people are crimes. And they become more qualified if these crimes are with the intent of attack the rule of law and support a coup.

Your legal comprehension of the case is low and you are just repeating the far right narrative, created so that they will not face consequences for their coup attempt.

> As already mentioned, the first item is false.

It's not false and it was only made possible by a corruption of the written words in the Supreme Court regiment AND by ignoring the 1988 constitution.

> The second is also false: if you perform an attack against the supreme court, in an coup attempt, or if you menace ministers, or the judges of supreme court, it is the supreme court that will handle the case.

First of all, there is no "fake news" crime in the Brazilian criminal code. Second, the Supreme Court cannot handle cases of people without special jurisdiction privileges, it must be handle by first instance courts. Third, you cannot have the same person performing the roles of victim, prosecutor and judge. This is a basically rule of Law, it's simply dishonest to pretend it's OK.

> It is also false that inquiry 4874 do not specify a crime to investigate.

Considering the existence of fraudulent news (fake news), slanderous denunciations, threats and infractions coated with animus calumniandi, diffamanadi and injuriandi, which affect the honor and security of the Federal Supreme Court, its members and families, resolves, in accordance with article 43 and subsequent of the Internal Regiment, open an iquiry to investigate the facts and corresponding infractions, in all their dimensions. [1]

Not a single concrete, specific instance of a crime is mentioned. There are only vagaries. It's a wildcard inquiry designed for political persecution.

> Your legal comprehension of the case is low and you are just repeating the far right narrative, created so that they will not face consequences for their coup attempt.

I've filled my comments with references, including the original document which determines the inquiry to be opened. Meanwhile all your comments accuse me of lying without any proof.

The thing is, I believe you know the inquiry is illegal, but you support it anyway because it is happening against people you don't like. That's why you have to bring up the ghost of a "far right narrative", but you are unable to reply with a single concrete fact.

In fact you don't even realize that you fail basic logic by referring to an event that happened on January 8th 2023 to justify the unconstitutional opening of an inquiry that happened 2019.

To make sure HN readers are not misled by your biased rebuttals, I will quote the words of the Brazilian Attorney General at the time, on her request for the archival of the inquiry, which was denied by the judge, prosecutor and victim of the case [2].

- The decision of Justice Dias Toffoli, who ordered the opening of this investigation ex officio, appointed its rapporteur, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, without observing the principle of free distribution; and gave it investigative powers, breached the guarantee of judicial impartiality in criminal actions, in addition to obstructing the criminal action holder’s access to the investigation.

- In addition to not observing the constitutional rules for the delimitation of powers or functions of the Public Prosecutor's Office in the criminal process, this decision transformed the investigation into an act with the concentration of criminal functions in the judge, which puts at risk the accusatory criminal system itself and the guarantee of the investigated regarding the exemption from the judging body.

- The jurisdiction of the Federal Supreme Court is not defined based on the fact that this court is a possible victim of a criminal act. The delimitation of the investigation cannot be generic, abstract, nor can it be exploratory of indeterminate acts, without definition of time and space, nor of individuals. After more than 30 days of this initiation, the files were not even sent to the Public Prosecutor's Office, as determined by the criminal procedural law itself

[1]https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/co/comunicado-supremo-tribunal-... [2]https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2019/04/16/raqu...

All your interpretation and from some of jurists that you cite is that the attacks that Brazilian institutions suffered, like the attacks caused by digital militias during the Bolsonaro government were not serious coordinated attacks against the rule of law and against the tribunal. If so, involving the supreme tribunal in the case was overkill and should not have been done. This is just this: an interpretation which lost the discussion in the relevant judgements. Several jurists will also have divergent interpretations: it does not matter, there are instances that deal with divergent interpretations and choose the right one, and STF is the maximum instance. The tribunal is chosen by different elected presidents from the past and they vote making the majority decide. Saying that "Brazil is dictatorship" just because you have a divergent interpretation is ridiculous.

You criticize that the STF was not the organization that should have opened the inquiry, saying that using article 43 of internal regiment of STF was wrong. You replicate the arguments in far right groups. According with your interpretation, build a missile to attack the tribunal is not a "crime in the dependencies of the tribunal". You are free to have this interpretation, but this is not the vigent interpretation. Moreover, what you also are conveniently ignoring is that organizations that otherwise should have opened the case if the attack were not considered in the dependencies of tribunal, nonetheless agreed with the inquiry: https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/10/agu-e-pgr-d... [source in pt-BR]

Several of your arguments, taken from far right groups, are weak:

> First of all, there is no "fake news" crime in the Brazilian criminal code.

This is just a term used in media. Show me an instance of someone jailed by "fake news". It does not exist. People are charged by crimes of threatening other people, unbased defamation, trying to abolish the rule of law, all of them are crimes and should be punished.

> Third, you cannot have the same person performing the roles of victim, prosecutor and judge.

If I threaten to kill all judges in Brazil, and create a plan to do so, according with you, I cannot be judged because any judge would also be victim in my crime? The fact is that there are cases where the STF has power to act, and that ridiculous argument do not overwrite this. Moreover, nobody is being at the same time judge and prosecutor. Inquiries are not criminal processes, they are administrative procedures. The criminal process comes later. And the prosecutor is not the STF, but the Prosecutor General of the Republic. Unless you have proofs that judges instruct and help prosecutors, like was proven in the carwash operation. But if this operation were carried like the carwash, Bolsonaro would already have been jailed. But fortunately that the due process in being respected in his case.

Once again you don't address the points in my previous points and reply with something completely different.

> All your interpretation and from some of jurists that you cite is that the attacks that Brazilian institutions suffered, like the attacks caused by digital militias during the Bolsonaro government were not serious coordinated attacks against the rule of law and against the tribunal.

Oh yes, the grave attacks of people talking on twitter. The Brazilian institutions suffered so much.

> Saying that "Brazil is dictatorship" just because you have a divergent interpretation is ridiculous.

Brazil is a dictatorship because its own Supreme Court disrespects the constitution, censors elected congressmen and journalists without due process (see Twitter Files Brazil), arrests people with without due process, withdraws access to case files to defense attorneys... the list goes on.

> You replicate the arguments in far right groups

Yes, the former Republic Attorney General, a well known far right extremist.

> This is just a term used in media

The exact term is used in the opening of the wildcard illegal inquiry.

> If I threaten to kill all judges in Brazil, and create a plan to do so, according with you, I cannot be judged because any judge would also be victim in my crime?

You think this is some sort of slam dunk argument but it is so juvenile that it shouldn't even deserve a thoughtful reply. You create a fantasy scenario where there's no specific victim ("threaten all judges in Brazil") that is obviously so absurd that such a threat shouldn't even be considered seriously. In the case of an actual crime, where a number of judges are victims, one would expect that investigations are carried out by the Federal Prosecution Service, not by the judges themselves, and that the case would be judged different judges, not the victims themselves.

> The fact is that there are cases where the STF has power to act

This is the core of the problem. The Supreme Court has the power to do whatever it wants, without limits. It is also a political court that is, in their own words, adversarial against right wing thought, and to defeat the right wing they will not be limited by the rule of law.

> Moreover, nobody is being at the same time judge and prosecutor

You cannot be serious.