The “coup” of January 8, 2023, which for two years has been the most sacred cause of the Lula-STF consortium, is dead. With the coup’s demise, obviously, the involvement of former President Jair Bolsonaro as its grand inspirer, organizer, and beneficiary also ceased to exist. In reality, no one can say it ended for sure, because, in the realm of facts, neither the coup nor Bolsonaro’s alleged participation ever began in the first place. Finally, the prosecution’s star witness, the renowned Colonel Mauro Cid, was heard in court, and their sole material evidence, the equally renowned “coup minutes,” was invoked. The colonel denied, in response to every question posed to him, that there was any coup attempt and that Bolsonaro participated in something that never happened. As for the minutes, the only thing proven is that they don’t exist.
Does the Supreme Federal Court (STF) feel like convicting someone? Then that person is already sentenced, regardless of their actions, the facts, or the law. The Supreme Court ruled that the January 8 unrest was an “armed coup,” with the weapons being a pair of slingshots and lipstick. It has decided Bolsonaro and several others are guilty. To this day, it has violated every criminal law it encountered to uphold its theories. It can very well now decree that there is evidence where there is no evidence at all. (The media, for example, will swallow anything the STF says.) The justices, however, will have to face the world by admitting they are convicting the accused without a shred of evidence that could be taken seriously in a civilized court.
That’s what the facts show. Cid answered “no” to every question asked about the two key themes of the interrogation. Was there planning, or an attempt, or at least a discussion of a coup d’état with Bolsonaro? Was there any order for someone to take action to stage a coup d’état? Every time he didn’t say “no” to what Alexandre de Moraes—simultaneously police, prosecutor, and judge of the proceedings—expected to hear, Colonel Cid stated he didn’t know, didn’t remember, or wasn’t sure about what they were asking him. What kind of key witness is that? In everything he answered, he was, in fact, a defense witness.
The prosecution’s case began to crumble with a question not even posed by a defense lawyer, but by Justice Luiz Fux himself: “Regarding minutes for a state of defense, state of siege, etc.: was this document signed?” Cid’s answer: “No, it was not.” From that point on, with questions from the defendants’ lawyers, a slow-motion disaster unfolded for the consortium and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR). “No,” the colonel stated, Bolsonaro did not participate in a supposed meeting with “businessmen” who wanted to stage the coup. “No,” there were no organized groups asking the former president for a coup; people simply visited him, each offering their ideas. “No,” Bolsonaro did not want to deploy the Army, as he believed the Lula government would collapse on its own, “from rottenness.”
Bolsonaro discussed with the heads of the Armed Forces about notes—which Cid doesn’t know who wrote—regarding the possibility of invoking Article 142 of the Federal Constitution and requesting Congressional authorization for a state of emergency or siege. Were any measures taken to do this? “No,” Cid stated. Bolsonaro, he affirmed in his testimony, neither wanted nor authorized what was being considered in that document—the infamous “coup minutes” that were supposed to be the prosecution’s dynamite evidence. The paper under discussion spoke of “new elections” and the arrest of a number of people, according to the colonel; but, at the end of the conversations, Bolsonaro, who according to Cid had already suggested that arrests be limited to Alexandre de Moraes, decided to do nothing—neither request a state of siege, nor annul the election, nor arrest anyone.
Did the president have any prior information about coup movements? No, Cid stated. Did he have any contact with what the police call the “crucial core,” a group that would link the encampments formed in front of the barracks and government authorities? “No, he did not,” the colonel said. Did he encourage a supposed truckers’ strike against the election result? “No,” Cid said; on the contrary, Bolsonaro stated that this would only disrupt the economy and asked for the suspension of the movements. What was discussed in a conversation at General Braga Netto’s house, Bolsonaro’s running mate and imprisoned for six months in the STF’s dungeons? “I don’t recall,” said the PGR’s “bomb-witness.” What came of the conversations between Bolsonaro and the interlocutors who urged him to “act”—both the “moderates” and the “radicals”? “They came to naught,” Cid said. After some time, the president asked everyone to stop pressuring him to sign exceptional measures and informed them that “things should remain as they were.” Ultimately, according to the timing done by lawyer Jeffrey Chiquini, in 2 hours and 27 minutes of his testimony, Cid said “I don’t know” 982 times.
And note that the colonel was personally threatened with arrest by Moraes, in a recorded video, if he didn’t “adjust” his statements to what they wanted him to say—affecting not just him, but also his father, his wife, and his daughter. What court on the planet, with real judges interested only in evidence, would convict anyone, let alone a former President of the Republic, based on the word of such a witness? As far as the PGR’s “deadly evidence” is concerned, the “coup minutes” are just as bad. The core of the problem is that, after two and a half years of massive investigation, the “coup minutes,” in flesh and blood, had not surfaced until now. It must be a unique case in the history of Criminal Law. It is a document that Justice Moraes and the prosecution constantly use as the fundamental piece of the formal accusation against the defendants—yet, at the same time, it is a document that does not exist. It is not attached to the case files. Its exact content is unknown because no transcript is available. No one has seen, with their own eyes, the Xandão-PGR-Federal Police minutes. Neither Colonel Cid, nor even Moraes himself, can confirm that the minutes exist. All Cid knows about it is that he received a message on his cell phone, which he doesn’t know who wrote and which is unsigned, mentioning Article 142, a state of siege, and other hypotheses for annulling the 2022 election.
All the rest of the accusation is strung together with threadbare reasoning, as demonstrated every five minutes by the defense lawyers. The defendants are being judged by a “panel” of five justices, not by the full 11 of the plenary. One is Alexandre de Moraes. Another, Flávio Dino, has publicly stated that Bolsonaro is the “devil.” The third is Cristiano Zanin, who until recently was Lula’s personal lawyer. There’s a “living dead,” Justice Cármen Lúcia, whose last known idea was to advocate for the adoption of illegal, yet provisional, censorship—which remains illegal, and has become permanent. Only Justice Fux is set apart. In other words: four out of five of them publicly state Bolsonaro is already condemned. Not even Attila the Hun would be able to say such a jury is impartial.
Like in ghost stories where nothing gets better as the narrative unfolds, especially when the clock strikes midnight, the “Brasília Cases” only get worse. The testimonies of the Armed Forces commanders from Bolsonaro’s term were a dismal outcome for Moraes and the PGR. The Army commander said Bolsonaro never asked him for any coup. The Air Force (FAB) Brigadier, whose branch has now been transformed into an air taxi for Janja, Peruvian thieves, and more of the same, kept hedging and only made it clear that he was there to defend himself. Finally, the Navy Admiral, presented by the Federal Police and the media as the great dark soul of the coup, stated that he neither organized nor agreed to any coup—largely because the national Navy, as former Minister Aldo Rebelo attested in court, lacks the means to stage a coup even at the Santos Yacht Club. To top it off, Justice Moraes conducts himself like a jailer. He threatens lawyers and witnesses—even with arrest—, becomes openly vexed when testifiers don’t provide the answers he wants, pressures everyone, and refers to the STF as “my court.” The announced conviction of Bolsonaro and the other defendants, as plainly visible in the “Brasília Cases,” is an exhibition of political terrorism akin to what is practiced in the judiciary of the worst dictatorships. The “armed coup,” today, boils down to what journalists, artists benefitted by the Rouanet Law, and the left in general insist on saying; in the actual court records there is just nothing. It is not a trial. It is a settling of scores in a country where force has abolished the law.
Also read “Barroso: ‘On the issue of combating corruption, my position did not prevail in several votes. I regret’”
