• Bolsonaro "All the time making my life hell, dammit!"
  • Interferences The Police accuse Jair Bolsonaro of intimidating the investigator of the murder of Councilwoman Marielle Franco

After several days of tense waiting, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court decided to release a video of a meeting of the Jair Bolsonaro with his ministers that would prove that the president tried to interfere with the independence of the Federal Police.

"I have already tried to officially change our security people in Rio de Janeiro and I have not succeeded. It is over. I am not going to wait for them to screw up my family in bad faith, or a friend of mine, because I cannot change someone from the security that belongs to the structure. It is changed, if it is not possible, it is changed to the boss, if it is not possible to change the boss, it is changed to the minister. And final point. We are not kidding here "says Bolsonaro in a moment of the meeting, visibly irritated.

The meeting is a council of ministers of April 22, in which the former Minister of Justice and Public Security Sérgio Moro was still present . The former judge of Operation Lava Jato left the government accusing Bolsonaro of wanting to interfere with the police to protect his family, and assured investigators that at that meeting they would have the main evidence.

In other moments of the video, Bolsonaro says that he cannot "be surprised with news" and adds: "Damn, I have the Federal Police who does not pass any information on to me. I have the ... the intelligence of the Armed Forces and I have no information. The Abin (Brazilian Intelligence Agency) has its problems, but I have some information (...) we have problems, dammit! " Bolsonaro also affirms that the government's information system is "a shame" because the information does not reach him: "That way you cannot work, it becomes difficult. Therefore, I am going to interfere, and end point !.

The government had been trying for days to prevent the video from seeing the light. Through the State Attorney General's Office, he asked that it be kept secret to preserve national security, but later he agreed that only the fragments in which Bolsonaro speaks of the Federal Police should be published.

However, the Supreme Court disclosed almost everything, except for some parts in which some ministers make offensive comments against China related to the coronavirus, which raised fears of a serious diplomatic crisis. Finally, Judge Celso de Mello chose to disclose the edited video, without those sensitive parts. Even so, I leave the part in which the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, says that China is "like that guy you have to endure" and that the Asian country should finance a Marshall Plan globally for the damage caused by the coronavirus. China is Brazil's main trading partner.

"FUCKING" GOVERNORS

In the video bomb, each member of the cabinet has his or her glory minute. Human Rights Minister Damares Alves proposes to imprison governors and mayors for alleged abuses of restrictions by the coronavirus; the Minister of Education, Abraham Weintraub, also proposes prison, but "for the tramps of the Supreme", and the Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, proposes to take advantage of "that in the press only Covid is spoken of" to dismantle environmental laws.

Despite the infinite number of headlines, Bolsonaro's verbiage has a special role. The far-right leader calls São Paulo governor João Doria "shit" and Rio de Janeiro governor Wilson Witzel "dung" , two former allies now confronted with the president for his defense of social isolation measures. He also says that establishing a dictatorship in Brazil is "very easy", because any mayor can do it by decree, and that is why he wants to "arm the population."

In Brasilia, a few hours before the video saw the light, the weather was of maximum tension. One of Bolsonaro's closest ministers, General Augusto Heleno (head of the Institutional Security Cabinet) criticized the possibility of the president's motive being confiscated to deepen the investigation, as requested by opposition deputies. The Supreme Court asked the Prosecutor's Office to study that petition. For the general, investigating the president's motive is "inadmissible" and something that "may have unforeseeable consequences for national stability," he said in an official note. Various analysts interpreted these words as a coup threat from the government's military wing .

THE FAMILY PROBLEMS

Bolsonaro's attempts to control the Federal Police would have to do with family interests. According to Moro at the time, the president wanted someone "trusted" in the general direction, from whom he could ask for information about the progress of investigations of his interest. In addition, he continuously insisted on replacing the police superintendent in Rio de Janeiro, which he ended up achieving, a few days after Moro resigned from the position for not tolerating those pressures.

Bolsonaro has his political fief in Rio de Janeiro, and also most of his headaches. Two of his sons, Councilman Carlos and Senator Flávio, are the subject of five actions by the Prosecutor's Office that seek to clarify whether they used ghost advisers in their political offices to enrich themselves illegally. When pulling the thread, a total of 19 Bolsonaro relatives ended up being investigated.

Bolsonaro himself was also cited in a much more delicate case, the one investigating the murder of Rio de Janeiro councilor and activist Marielle Franco. One of the doormen of the urbanization in which Bolsonaro has a house assured the police that one of Franco's assassins asked to visit the Bolsonaro house the same day of the crime. The Federal Police opened an investigation and listened to the doorman, who immediately rectified and went wrong.

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