The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/28/bolsonaro-attacks-show-why-reporting-on-secret-brazil-archive-is-vital/
Glenn Greenwald, Leandro Demori, Betsy Reed
Justice Minister Moro
and his defenders are trying to distract attention away from their own
misconduct by fixating on the actions of those who revealed it.
When news emerged this week that the Federal Police
had arrested four people accused of hacking the Telegram accounts of various
Brazilian officials and providing some of that content to The Intercept, many
of our readers asked: What effect will this have on the reporting that we have
done and are continuing to do on this secret archive?
The answer, in one word: none.
The public interest in reporting
this material has been obvious from the start: These documents revealed
serious, systematic, and sustained improprieties and possible illegality by
Brazil’s current Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro while he
was a judge, as well as by the chief prosecutor of the Car Wash investigation
Deltan Dallagnol and other members of that investigative task force. It was the
Car Wash task force, which Moro presided over as a judge, whose prosecution of
ex-President Lula da Silva resulted in his removal from the 2018 election,
paving the way for the far-right Jair Bolsonaro to become president. The
corruption exposed by our reporting was so serious, and so consequential, that
even many of Moro’s most loyal supporters abandoned him and called for his
resignation within a week of the publication of our initial stories.
As the revelations of corruption by
Moro and Deltan grew — reported both by us and our journalistic partners in
Brazil — those officials resorted to the tactics used by government officials
everywhere when their improprieties are revealed in the press: They tried to
distract attention away from their
