Bolsonaro urges top court to stop ‘fake news’ probe
President Jair Bolsonaro yesterday slammed Brazil’s Supreme Court for investigating an alleged disinformation and intimidation campaign involving his supporters, as a political crisis mushroomed amid the country’s accelerating Covid-19 outbreak.
In his escalating confrontation with the top court, Bolsonaro said it was unacceptable that a judge had approved police raids on Wednesday into the homes of business leaders, bloggers and lawmakers accused of spreading lies and threatening foes.
“The Supreme Court investigation is targeting those who support me. They want to remove the media that I have in my favor,” he told reporters.
“Some people want to remove me from office so they can come back and steal again. They will not oust me,” he said.
The crisis in Brasilia continued to distract from efforts to control an exploding coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 25,000 and infected more than 400,000 people in the country — second only to the United States in confirmed cases.
Bolsonaro’s tensions with the judiciary had already boiled over last week, when a judge released a video of a cabinet meeting where one of Bolsonaro’s ministers said the Supreme Court justices should be put in jail.
Criticism of the top court on social media last year, including threats against judges, led the chief justice to open the probe into alleged financing of a “fake news” network.
Bolsonaro supporters including Sao Paulo lawmaker Douglas Garcia, former congressman Roberto Jefferson and retail entrepreneur Luciano Hang said their homes and offices had been searched and telephone and laptops seized on Wednesday.
They denied wrongdoing and called the investigation an attack on their freedom of expression.
Bolsonaro said the “invasion of the homes of innocent people was unacceptable.” The president urged the Supreme Court to suspend the investigation and offered to meet with the acting chief justice.
“Don’t plunge Brazil into a political crisis,” he warned. DPA adds: The searches in the federal district of the capital Brasilia and in five states, including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, were authorised by Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes, according to the tweet posted by police.
The people targeted included a former lawmaker, a retired army officer, entrepreneurs, activists and bloggers, daily O Globo reported.
They are suspected of spreading hate messages against the political left and posting threats against the Supreme Court, which they see as unfairly undermining the presidential powers of Bolsonaro, a farright former army captain.
Bolsonaro has attended rallies of his supporters without wearing a face mask and breaking social distancing, despite Brazil having the highest number of Covid-19 infections in Latin America.
The state of Sao Paulo, which has imposed a quarantine until June 15, may allow some of its areas to reactivate economic sectors which are not considered essential, Agencia Brasil quoted Governor Joao Doria as saying.
Nearly 5mn Brazilians have been left unemployed just before and during the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to official statistics published yesterday.
About 1.1mn people lost their jobs between February and April. In addition, 3.7mn informal workers lost their income.
The number of infections rose on Wednesday to 411,821, the second highest behind the United States. Scientific studies have estimated the total number of infections in Brazil could be up to seven times higher than officially recorded.