PGE defends that Bolsonaro becomes ineligible for lies about ballot boxes

In a statement sent this Wednesday (12) to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the Electoral Attorney General’s Office (PGE) asked that former President Jair Bolsonaro have his political rights suspended, making him ineligible. The opinion, signed by the Electoral Attorney General, Paulo Gonet, was sent at 11 pm yesterday (12), within the scope of the electoral judicial investigation action (Aije) in which Bolsonaro is investigated for attacking the electoral process and the electronic ballot boxes, without credible evidence, during a meeting with ambassadors at Palácio da Alvorada, in June 2022. The PGE’s position is one of the last stages of Aije. With this, the expectation is that the rapporteur of the case, Minister Benedito Gonçalves, will release the case for judgment in plenary in the coming weeks, after elaborating his vote. It will be up to the president of the TSE, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, to schedule the trial. In the piece, Gonet highlighted that Bolsonaro’s presentation to the diplomatic representations brought together a compilation of information and rumors repeatedly denied by various official bodies. If the PGE’s request is accepted by the TSE plenary, Bolsonaro could become ineligible for the next eight years. By determination of Gonçalves, the action on the ambassadors runs under secrecy in the TSE. Among the evidence collected in the process, there is the so-called draft of the coup, an apocryphal document that was found in the house of the last Minister of Justice of the Bolsonaro government, Anderson Torres, in a search and seizure carried out by the Federal Police (PF). This draft decree provided for a kind of military intervention in the Electoral Justice, in order to prevent the implementation of the result of the polls. The document was included in the file at the request of the PDT, author of the Aije. Torres testified about the document at the TSE. The former Minister of the Civil House, Ciro Nogueira, and Admiral Flávio Augusto Viana Rocha, former Special Secretary for Strategic Affairs of the Presidency, were also heard. This is the most advanced of the 17 Aijes opened during the 2022 general elections that target Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro’s defense repeatedly denies any irregularity at the meeting, which he says was “a debate of ideas”, without an electoral nature.

Agência Brasil