Subir Ghosh

To say that Alexandre de Moraes is an authoritarian tyrant who has repeatedly abused his power to censor, arrrest and otherwise persecute both his critics and Bolsonaro supporters -- or to say that Moraes himself is more implicated in the Banco Master scandal than anyone and thus should not be judging anyone, particularly given that he deleted his own messages when Vorcaro was asking him when he should flee Brazil to escape arrest and justice -- is not to say that Flavio Bolsonaro is innocent. These are completely separate and unrelated points. And this is not a complicated point. It's exactly the same as the point I made about Lava Jato: the fact that there were serious irregularities in Lula's prosecution (in my view) did not mean and does mean that Lula was innocent of the numerous corruption charges he faced. The key point in all of this: there is no legitimate Brazilian democracy or credible Brazilian justice while Moraes remains at the center of the most consequential decisions. Until Moraes himself is aggressively investigated for the R$ 200 million his family got from Vorcaro and the messages he deleted, anything involving Moraes -- including his seizure of Flavio Bolsonaro's passport and his order not to leave the country -- is a complete farce and travesty.

The Brazilian Supreme Court Judge revered by the Brazilian left (and now the American left for seizing Bolsonaro's passport), Alexandre de Moraes, comes from the extremist "law-and-order" faction of the Brazilian Right as well as its extreme pro-austerity neoliberal pro-banker wing. Less than a decade ago, when Moraes was nominated to the Supreme Court, the Brazilian left branded him a white supremacist, a fascist and a leader of the right-wing coup government. One of Brazil's leading left-wing politicians (@GuilhermeBoulos) explicitly accused Moraes of having committed the worst crime against humanity that exists: "RACIST GENOCIDE," by deliberately murdering poor black people en masse while he was the Justice Secretary for São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin (who himself spent years being called all the same names by the Brazilian left until Lula picked Alckmin as VP in 2022). Then -- starting in 2019 -- Moraes began censoring, imprisoning and persecuting Lula's enemies and imprisoning his own critics, and was overnight transformed by the large Brazilian media and the left into the Savior of Brazilian Justice and Democracy. Only on the left can one transform from from *fascist and genocidal racist* to heroic guardian of justice in less than a decade. Also, Moraes' own corruption scandals make everyone else's seem trivial, yet his passport works just fine and he freely travels the world in great wealth that he and his family received from the corrupt billionaire banker responsible for Brazil's worst-ever banking collapse. Enjoy!

If you knew anything about this "judge," you'd be calling him a Nazi. It was just a few years ago that the Brazilian left branded him a white supreamcist and fascist coup-monger guilty of -- and I quote -- "racist genocide." But since he's now persecuting people you dislike politically, you present him as some sort of neutral law-enforcement agent does doing his job, like the local sheriff. This "judge" is implicated in financial and corruption scandals far more grave than Flavio Bolsonaro, yet his passport remains fully valid. So does the passport of Lula's son, who fled Brazil and is living in immense and inexplicable luxury in Spain despite multiple investigations into how he corruptly leveraged his influence in his father's government for lobbyist clients. The same is true of countless allies of Lula who with millions in Swiss bank accounts, who spend more time in Dubai and Paris than Brasilia. There are a lot of topics and countries I don't know much about, and when I'm faced with news stories about such matters, I opt to remain silent until I can be informed, so that I don't end up saying things like you just did.

Brazilian authorities and media are trying to find out where Flavio Bolsonaro is. Brazil's notorious authoritarian Judge Alexandre de Moraes -- before the votes were counted -- already had an order prepared to seize Bolsonaro's passports and bar him from leaving the country even though **he's been charged with no crime** (there are various pending financial investigations). Moraes signed the order barring Bolsonaro from leaving Brazil SEVEN MINUTES after Lula was declared the winner on Sunday night. A media outlet in Argentina this morning reported that Bolsonaro entered Argentina to fly to the US. His friends and allies deny this, but Flavio could easily just appear in Brazil or even by video and has not done so. Argentina is being sketchy, evasive and somewhat uncooperative with Brazil's federal police (Lula and Milei are obviously not allies). Whatever else is true, it is not exactly a sign of a healthy, normal or functioning democracy when the candidate who narrowly loses a presidential race -- and concedes defeat -- is suddenly barred from leaving the country by a Supreme Court Judge now globally notorious for censoring, imprisoning and otherwise persecuting his critics and opponents of Lula's government. It is also worth noting that Bolsonaro's party dominates the Senate, having run on a vow to impeach Moraes, and this is seen by many as a kind of leverage/hostage ploy by Moraes to cling to power.