Fachin took the case from Mendonça on the eve of the vote. That is the fact. Whether it was procedure or protection is the fight.
On the night of September 12, STF president Edson Fachin formally replaced André Mendonça as rapporteur of Petition 16.662 — the proceeding that will decide whether Alexandre de Moraes faces an investigation over his contacts with Daniel Vorcaro, the imprisoned former owner of Banco Master. The same order sent the Banco Master and INSS fraud files to the presidency, freezing them under Mendonça until further notice. The plenary session remains Tuesday, September 15, now with Fachin opening the hearing instead of the minister who published the evidence.
Cause
The crisis began on September 1, when Mendonça lifted secrecy on a Federal Police report drawn from Vorcaro’s seized phone. The material identified more than 50 messages sent to a number the PF attributed to Moraes. Vorcaro asked whether he needed to leave the country two days before his arrest, asked Moraes to intervene with Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet and PF director Andrei Rodrigues, and discussed meetings. Metadata also showed Moraes as the last editor of a roughly R$130 million contract between Vorcaro’s bank and the law firm of Moraes’s wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes. Additional records pointed to credit cards with high limits issued to the minister’s children.
Moraes answered by using the Fake News inquiry — which he himself reported — to accuse Mendonça of administrative improbity, abuse of authority, and a crime of responsibility. He alleged that Mendonça had illegally directed police work at him. Fachin pulled that accusation out of the Fake News inquiry, opened a separate petition (16.704), stripped Moraes of the Fake News rapporteurship, and on September 9 ordered that any potential investigation of an STF justice must first go through the presidency.
By Saturday the 12th the two tracks were colliding. Mendonça sent PET 16.662 to Fachin to comply with the September 9 order. Minutes later Fachin assumed the rapporteurship, citing the risk that the Tuesday vote could make Mendonça an “interested party” under Article 144, IV of the Civil Procedure Code and therefore impeded. He simultaneously refused Moraes’s request to try both petitions on the same day. Moraes’s case stays on September 15. The case against Mendonça was set for September
Consequence
Three things changed immediately.
First, the minister who ordered the report and lifted the secrecy no longer presents the case. Fachin will read the report and frame the question for the other justices.
Second, the two large criminal inquiries Mendonça had been running — Master and the INSS “Sem Desconto” scheme — are now parked at the presidency. They are not reassigned yet, but they cannot move while the court decides whether Mendonça is conflicted.
Third, the public session on Tuesday is no longer a confrontation between two antagonists inside the same proceeding. It is a collegiate vote on whether the PF material is enough to open a formal investigation of a sitting justice, with the court president controlling the docket.
The conservative reading is straightforward: the court removed the rapporteur who produced the inconvenient evidence three days before the vote, using a technical impediment argument that only became urgent after Moraes and his allies pressed for delay or joinder. The institutional reading is that the presidency is trying to keep two justices from investigating each other and to prevent later annulment claims. Both can be true at once. The timing still looks like damage control.
Did Fachin fold?
Not completely, and not in one direction.
He did not give Moraes the joint session Moraes wanted. He did not postpone September 15 despite pressure from Gilmar Mendes. He had already taken the Fake News inquiry away from Moraes — the main instrument Moraes had used since 2019. Those are not the acts of a president who simply surrendered to the most powerful justice on the court.
He did, however, take the Moraes-Vorcaro petition from the only justice who had treated the PF findings as a matter for the full court rather than a problem to be contained. He froze Mendonça’s two major investigations. He left open the possibility that, after Tuesday, Mendonça could be declared impeded and lose those cases for good. That is the part that looks like a fold to the court’s instinct for self-preservation.
Fachin’s pattern since September 3 has been concentration of power in the presidency and separation of the two fights. That protects the institution more than it protects either man. Whether it protects the public’s right to a clean examination of the Vorcaro messages is the question Tuesday will answer.
What to expect next
Tuesday, September 15, 10 a.m., live. The plenary will decide whether to open an investigation of Moraes or archive the petition. Possible outcomes:
- A majority votes to investigate. The case then goes to the Prosecutor-General for a formal request. Moraes would almost certainly seek to remain on the bench while it proceeds.
- A majority archives. The messages stay on the public record but produce no criminal inquiry inside the STF.
- Requests for vista (time to study the files) delay a final count. Fachin has signaled that anticipated votes can still be registered, which reduces the value of delay.
- A motion for precautionary removal of Moraes from his duties while the matter is pending. That would require a separate majority and is the highest-risk move for the court’s already damaged standing.
September 23 is the date set for the petition against Mendonça. If Tuesday produces a finding that Mendonça is impeded, the Master and INSS files stay with the presidency or are redistributed. If Tuesday produces an investigation of Moraes, the political cost of then going after Mendonça rises.
The PF has 24 hours from Saturday night to tell the court who holds Vorcaro’s phone extract and in what condition. Other justices have already asked for the full raw material. How much of that extract reaches the bench before Tuesday will shape the vote more than any speech.
The court is no longer arguing about whether the messages exist. It is arguing about who is allowed to look at them and what looking at them is allowed to cost a justice. That is the real change Fachin made on Saturday night.
Sources used in the article
• UOL — Fachin takes rapporteurship from Mendonça
https://noticias.uol.com.br/politica/ultimas-noticias/2026/09/12/fachin-tira-relatoria-de-mendonca-e-assume-caso-moraes-vorcaro.ghtm
• G1 — Fachin assumes PET 16.662 and sends Master/INSS files to the presidency
https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2026/09/12/fachin-assume-relatoria-de-discussao-sobre-suposta-relacao-entre-moraes-e-vorcaro.ghtml
• Gazeta do Povo — Fachin assumes the Moraes–Vorcaro inquiry
https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/republica/fachin-assume-relatoria-de-investigacao-sobre-crimes-de-moraes-e-vorcaro/
• VEJA — Fachin cites possible impediment of Mendonça
https://veja.abril.com.br/brasil/fachin-assume-relatoria-de-processo-sobre-moraes/
• CNN Brasil — change in who opens the Sept. 15 session
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/fachin-assume-julgamentos-do-inss-master-e-caso-moraes/
• Estadão — Sept. 15 limited to Vorcaro–Moraes messages; Mendonça case on Sept. 23
https://www.estadao.com.br/politica/blog-do-fausto-macedo/fachin-determina-que-plenario-do-stf-julgue-na-terca-apenas-mensagens-entre-moraes-e-vorcaro/
• BBC Brasil — joint judgment denied
https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cwyz1e26921o
• STF docket (PET 16.662 / PET 16.704) — official orders substituting rapporteurship and scheduling the two sessions
https://portal.stf.jus.br/
#STF #Fachin #AlexandreDeMoraes #AndreMendonca #Vorcaro #BancoMaster #CasoMaster #PET16662 #INSS #Sessao15Setembro