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NYT Worries Brazil Goes Too Far to Fight Far Right Brian Mier ([link removed])


NYT: Why Bolsonaro Was Barred in Brazil but Trump Can Run in the U.S.

Describing the differences in how Brazil and the US treated candidates who tried to seize power after losing the election, the New York Times (7/1/23 ([link removed]) ) highlighted "widespread claims of overreach" in Brazil, noting criticisms that the Brazilian system is "prone to more abuse" and that its courts may be "in a repressive mode."

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted on June 30 of the first of 16 charges of election fraud ([link removed]) levied against him in Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, and sentenced to an eight-year ban from running for political office.

A July 1 ([link removed]) New York Times article, headlined "Why Bolsonaro Was Barred in Brazil but Trump Can Run in the US," does a fine job of explaining the differences in the two nations’ electoral systems. However it also further develops a narrative it has been building since Brazil’s 2022 election season of an authoritarian court system that engages in judicial overreach to persecute political enemies.

To an average news consumer who hasn’t paid much attention to the last eight years of Brazilian history and is unfamiliar with Brazilian law, the Times’ claims that courts may be overstepping their boundaries may look legitimate. When compared to the way the Times portrayed ([link removed]) the Lava Jato (or “Car Wash”) anti-corruption investigation, and its political persecution of (then former) President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and other members of the leftist Workers Party, however, it looks like as though the Times is using its traditional double standard of going soft ([link removed]) on right-wing extremists while portraying leftist Latin American governments as authoritarian ([link removed]) .


** Judicial abuses of a 'hero'
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NYT: A Judge’s Bid to Clean Up Brazil From the Bench

The New York Times (8/25/17 ([link removed]) ) depicted Judge Sergio Moro as "the face of the national reckoning for Brazil’s ruling class."

In 37 New York Times articles published between January 2015 and April 2018 about the US DoJ-backed Lava Jato operation, which culminated in Lula's illegitimate ([link removed]) election-year arrest, judicial overreach was barely alluded to at all.

One rare reference occurred in Simon Romero ([link removed]) ’s 2016 article "Tempers Flare in Brazil Over Intercepts of Calls by Ex-President ‘Lula’" (3/17/16 ([link removed]) ). Twenty-four paragraphs into the piece, after labeling now-disgraced Lava Jato Judge Sergio Moro as a "hero," and giving space to his allies to falsely claim it isn’t illegal in Brazil to wiretap a standing president and leak the conversations to the press, a voice of criticism creeps in:

“He was not acting as a judge,” said Ronaldo Lemos, a law professor at Rio de Janeiro State University and one of the creators of the legislation covering freedom of speech and privacy on the Internet. “He was acting as a politician. That’s what concerns me.”

This voice of reason, however, is immediately debunked in a subsequent paragraph quoting conservative law professor Fernando Castelo Branco, “I don’t think there was a single illegal act in what Judge Sergio Moro did.”

The same day of the Times article, Moro submitted a 31-page apology ([link removed]) to the Brazilian Supreme Court for illegally leaking ([link removed]) the conversation, but this was skipped over by the New York Times. Nor did the Times cover the episode when he broke the law again by wiretapping all telephone conversations ([link removed]) in Lula’s defense lawyers' law firm for 30 days, sharing the conversations with the prosecution team so that it could preemptively map out ([link removed]) and develop strategies against future motions from the defense team.

Shortly after Moro admitted to breaking the law, a group of his cronies in Brazil’s TRF-4 regional court in Porto Alegre made an unprecedented ruling, allowing the Lava Jato investigation ([link removed]) to operate outside of the law ([link removed]) . The New York Times didn’t identify this as a warning sign of judicial overreach, however, as it continued to publish article ([link removed]) after article ([link removed]) praising Lava Jato. This led up to Lula’s April 2018 arrest for “indeterminate acts of corruption,” based on one coerced plea bargain testimony with no material evidence. ([link removed])

Lula was released from prison, due a finding of illegal forum-shopping ([link removed]) for a sympathetic court, and his convictions were reversed and all pending Lava Jato charges dropped due to collusion ([link removed]) between the judge and prosecutors. The Times nevertheless failed to engage ([link removed]) in any self-criticism on its role in normalizing the presidential candidate's arrest and Bolsonaro’s subsequent rise to power.


** Crimes on live TV
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Guardian: Bolsonaro’s attack on Brazil’s electoral system sparks outrage

Making false claims about the electoral system in Brazil can get you banned from selections—maybe especially when it's done in front of dozens of foreign diplomats (Guardian, 7/19/22 ([link removed]) ).

Both-sidesing Lula’s FBI-backed ([link removed]) political persecution and Bolsonaro’s guilty verdict as examples of judicial overreach is an act of bad faith. Unlike Lula—who was declared guilty during an election year, based on a single witness with a coercive plea bargain, by a judge who went on to serve as justice minister for his electoral opponent—Bolsonaro committed the crimes he was convicted of on live national television.

In a publicly funded event inside the president’s official residence, over 100 foreign officials were subjected to a slide show ([link removed]) presented by Bolsonaro, during which he attacked the integrity ([link removed]) of Brazil's electoral system without providing any evidence to support his claims. Three months before the elections, at a moment when he was trailing Lula in double digits in the polls, millions of people watched him on TV Brasil and in his social media accounts, as he claimed that his enemies were going to defraud Brazil’s electronic voting system. In Brazil, this constitutes ([link removed]) abuse of authority, election fraud and misuse of public funds.

Bolsonaro’s guilty conviction in the electoral court has opened the door ([link removed]) to a federal audit that could result in him being charged for the estimated R$12,000 in public funds he spent to host the event, and a criminal investigation that could result in jail time.


** 'Going too far?'
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NYT: To Defend Democracy, Is Brazil’s Top Court Going Too Far?

After Brazil's Supreme Court investigated associates of a business leader who called for a coup against Lula, the New York Times (9/26/22 ([link removed]) ) reported that, "according to experts in law and government, the court has taken its own repressive turn."

Judicial overreach in Brazil never seemed to bother the Times when it was used in a kangaroo court procedure against Brazil’s largest progressive political party, but one week before the 2022 presidential elections it insinuated that right-wing extremist President Jair Bolsonaro and his followers were the real victims, with "To Defend Democracy, Is Brazil’s Top Court Going Too Far?" (9/26/22 ([link removed]) ). It continued in January with "He Is Brazil’s Defender of Democracy. Is He Actually Good for Democracy?" (1/22/23 ([link removed]) ), which ran with the subhead:

Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, was crucial to Brazil’s transfer of power. But his aggressive tactics are prompting debate: Can one go too far to fight the far right?

Why would the New York Times wait to complain about judicial overreach until a leftist government in Latin America attempts to enforce the rule of law to punish people guilty of fomenting a neofascist military coup? Brazil’s case is hardly unique. After the Nicaraguan government began prosecuting participants in the failed 2018 right-wing coup attempt ([link removed]) that left 253 people dead, the New York Times (3/2/23 ([link removed]) ) compared the government to Nazi Germany. When Bolivian courts ordered the arrest of the leader of the 2019 right-wing coup, during which police massacred dozens of nonviolent protesters, the Times (6/10/22 ([link removed]) ) raised concerns about “politicians’ use of the justice system to target opponents.”

Bolsonaro’s close ties to Donald Trump and Steve Bannon created the first convergence of interests between the Brazilian left and the US Democratic Party in decades, leading the Biden administration to quickly recognize Brazil’s election results and support Lula’s inauguration in January. However, a series of moves Lula has taken since then—from refusing ([link removed]) to send ammunition to Ukraine, to giving the red-carpet treatment ([link removed]) to Nicolas Maduro, to de-dollarization ([link removed]) plans for trade with China—must have some people in the State Department thinking about the possibilities of fostering another coup in Brazil.

This is where the New York Times' “judicial overreach” narrative can be helpful. If the US does decide to move in that direction, Times readers are already being groomed for an “authoritarian Latin American strongman” narrative.
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ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) (Twitter:@NYTimes ([link removed]) ). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
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