Gilmar Mendes’ Late-Night Maneuver: Delay, Dilute, and Protect the Untouchable
By Hotspotnews
On Friday evening, Justice Gilmar Mendes, the longest-serving member of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, sent a six-page official letter to Court President Edson Fachin. The request was clear: postpone the extraordinary plenary session scheduled for Tuesday, September 15, take personal control of the cases, and force a joint judgment of two separate matters — the Federal Police report on messages between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and banker Daniel Vorcaro, and the accusations Moraes leveled against Justice André Mendonça.
This is not a technical request for better procedure. It is a political operation.
The September 15 session was called by Fachin himself after weeks of open warfare inside the Court. Mendonça, rapporteur of the Banco Master investigations, had the Federal Police extract and report dozens of messages Vorcaro sent to a number attributed to Moraes. Moraes responded by pulling unsigned internal PF intelligence reports — documents that explicitly state they have “no probative value” — and accusing Mendonça of abuse of authority, administrative improbity, and directing investigations for political reasons. Fachin then froze both sides, pulled Moraes off the fake-news inquiry, and scheduled a plenary session to confront the Vorcaro-Moraes material.
Gilmar now wants that session delayed and expanded so that Mendonça sits in the dock alongside Moraes. The language is institutional: “connection,” “risk of contradictory decisions,” “need to instruct and delimit.” The effect is different. It converts a specific, documented set of communications involving one justice into a mutual smear session. Moral equivalence by judicial fiat.
Possible answers from Fachin
Fachin has spent the last week trying to look like the adult in the room. He has three realistic options.
First, he accepts Gilmar’s request in full: postpones Tuesday, assumes both petitions, and sets a later joint hearing. That would be a clear victory for the Moraes-Gilmar-Zanin-Dino bloc. It buys time, muddies the record, and treats Mendonça’s conduct as equivalent to Moraes’ contacts with a banker now in pretrial detention.
Second, he keeps the date but rewrites the agenda. He could open the session with the Prosecutor General’s request to annul the PF report, then allow discussion of Mendonça’s alleged interference. This is the classic Fachin compromise: appear even-handed while giving the majority bloc most of what it wants.
Third, he holds the line. He proceeds on September 15 with the original focus — the legality of Mendonça’s order, the validity of the Vorcaro messages, and whether those facts justify an investigation of Moraes. That would be the most institutionally honest course and the least likely.
A fourth, quieter option is delay without announcement: let the weekend pass, consult colleagues, and issue a decision late Monday. In a Court that has already shown it prefers backroom coordination to public accountability, this is plausible.
Consequences
Whatever Fachin chooses, the damage is already done. A Supreme Court that must schedule an extraordinary session to decide whether one of its own members can be investigated — and then immediately faces a demand to put another member on the same docket — has ceased to look like a court. It looks like a factional committee settling scores.
If the cases are joined, the public will see what many already suspect: there is no equal justice at the STF. There are protected names and expendable ones. Mendonça, appointed during the previous administration and frequently at odds with the Court’s dominant group, becomes the price of protecting Moraes. The unsigned, self-disqualifying intelligence reports Moraes used against his colleague will be treated as serious enough to balance actual message traffic with a banker under investigation for fraud.
The institutional cost is total demoralization. Brazilians have watched the Court expand its power for years — speech regulation, electoral rules, congressional prerogatives. Now they watch the justices accuse one another of the same abuses they claim to police. Trust does not survive that spectacle.
Politically, the timing is worse. This is an election year. Every delay and every “joint analysis” will be read as the Court protecting its own while ordinary citizens face the full weight of the same institution. The ministers know this. They proceed anyway.
Gilmar Mendes did not invent the crisis. He is merely managing it in the only way this Court knows how: by spreading the embarrassment so no single member has to carry it alone. The request is not about due process. It is about survival of the inner circle.
They do not care that the Court looks broken. They care who still controls the gavel when the dust settles.
#STF #GilmarMendes #AlexandreDeMoraes #AndreMendonca #Fachin #CriseNoSTF #BancoMaster #JusticaSeletiva #SupremoTribunalFederal
Sources: Gazeta do Povo, Estadão, O Globo, Folha de S.Paulo, CNN Brasil, G1, Valor Econômico, Exame, CBN.