Thread by @shellenberger

🚨EXCLUSIVE: JANUARY 8 FILES

New leaked files reveal that Brazil’s Supreme Court illegally used social media posts to incarcerate pro-Bolsonaro protesters.

On January 8, 2023, hundreds of supporters of former President @JairBolsonaro entered government buildings in Brasília, in an episode strikingly similar to January 6 in the US. Many were elderly or ill and committed no acts of violence. Yet all were labeled “coup plotters,” “terrorists,” and “fascists” by Brazil’s president @LulaOficial and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Now, the JANUARY 8 FILES show that Moraes created a secret and illegal intelligence task force that used social media posts to justify the imprisonment of nonviolent protesters.

Moraes and his task force:
— operated through a secret WhatsApp group that created illegal intelligence “reports”
— kept protestors detained while performing scans of their social media;
— used online speech as a basis for “preventative” imprisonment;
— denied lawyers access to evidence;
— illegally used a biometric database to identify protesters.

These files reveal that January 8 prosecutions were politically motivated and involved sweeping abuses of power.

Moraes, serving Lula’s interests, bypassed the law to effectively criminalize political speech. His overprosecution of protesters helped legitimize the narrative that January 8 was a coordinated “coup attempt” – a narrative central to the court’s ongoing prosecution of Bolsonaro.

The JANUARY 8 FILES investigation was led by @david_agape_ and @EliVieiraJr and edited by @galexybrane

CONTEXT:

Last Month, Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) ordered Bolsonaro to wear an electronic ankle monitor and prohibited him from using social media and communicating with other individuals under investigation.

Brazil now faces 50% tariffs from the US, a measure set to go into effect on August 6.

Moraes’ “creative” use of his powers — sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act for human rights abuses by US Secretary of State @marcorubio — was the basis for:
— Banning @jairbolsonaro from elections for 8 years
— Censoring journalists & attempts at intimidation against critics like @elonmusk
— Mass arrests and asset freezes of innocent people

This is lawfare at its highest level.

The leaked JANUARY 8 FILES reveal new material from the “Vaza Toga” archive first exposed by @ggreenwald and @FabioSerapiao.

“The Prosecutor General’s Office asked for their release, but the Justice doesn’t want to let them go before we check their social media.”

In the weeks following January 8, hundreds of detainees remained in jail — even when the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) formally recommended their release. Legal deadlines were ignored, violating the Code of Criminal Procedure.

What public defenders and attorneys suspected, but could not yet prove, can now be confirmed. The real reason behind the delays was that Moraes was waiting for his task force to scan defendants’ social media accounts.

In a WhatsApp message on February 13, 2023, Moraes’ loyal chief of staff, Cristina Kusahara, acknowledged that the PGO had recommended the release of a group of detainees, but Moraes “doesn’t want to let them go before we can check their social media.”

“May we give each person what they deserve: prison! 😜😜😜😜😜.”

On March 1, 2023, Judge Airton Vieira sent a farewell message to the WhatsApp group. He had just wrapped up his role overseeing custody hearings for the January 8 detainees.

The judge, tasked with ensuring fairness and due process, was openly celebrating a presumed outcome. “May we give each person what they deserve: prison! 😜😜😜😜😜,” he wrote, as if guilt had already been determined long before any trial.

The judge’s reference to “the other groups” hinted at the existence of multiple parallel chats. According to our sources within the TSE, there were several other WhatsApp groups used to discuss official matters — all part of a broader, compartmentalized network operating entirely in the shadows.

HOW IT WORKED:

Kusahara, relaying orders from Moraes, ran the group with authoritarian rigor, demanding speed and volume.

STF & TSE officials participated, incluindo Eduardo Tagliaferro, head of the TSE’s anti-disinformation unit.

The task force followed a three step process:

— First, they received lists of detainees from the Federal Police
— Then they illegally queried the TSE’s biometric database, GestBio, to identify protesters
— Using the data to find social media accounts, the team produced “reports” that labeled each detainee as positive (those who would remain in jail) or negative (those who had a chance to walk free)

ANALYSIS:

Our team analyzed the spreadsheets used by the task force to classify detainees. According to the STF’s records, 1,398 reports were issued. Of the 319 people classified with 69 reports we were able to access, 42 people were tagged as “positive” and 277 as “negative.” We then cross-referenced the data with the STF’s lists of individuals who were released or sent to prison after the hearings.

While a negative report was no guarantee of release, no one who received a positive report was released. These secret reports were never shown to defense attorneys.

Reasons for a positive report included:

— Sharing posts about protests
— Posting pro-Bolsonaro content
— Wearing green and yellow (Brazilian flag colors)
— Following right-wing pages
— Criticizing the STF, Lula, or the elections
— Participating in Telegram or WhatsApp groups
— Reposting content labeled “disinformation”

“So, according to Egghead, nobody can question anything?”

In one case, the task force flagged a truck driver, Claudiomiro da Rosa Soares, for a series of Facebook posts that criticized Lula and questioned the 2022 election. Accused of “violent attempt against the democratic state,” the man spent 11 months and 7 days in jail without ever committing a violent act.

Among the truck driver’s cited content: a meme asking “How did this guy get 60 million votes?” after Lula was booed at Pelé’s funeral; a comment accusing Supreme Court justices of being “sellouts”; and a reposted news story about election fraud with a comment criticizing Moraes: “So, according to Egghead [Moraes], nobody can question anything?”

“Enforcing the Constitution is not a coup.”

Adenilson Demetrio de Cordova received a “positive” label because of a single post found on X. It linked to a petition titled “Manifesto to the Brazilian Nation – In Defense of Liberty,” published months before the 2022 election by a profile with zero followers and zero views.

Another man, Ademir da Silva, was kept in jail for a single Instagram post. The post read: “Enforcing the Constitution is not a coup.” That alone was classified as “anti-democratic” and as evidence of “discontent with the 2022 election results.” No other content was cited.

“I can go into full detail, but it won’t meet the speed you all need.”

Errors were common. A woman named Vildete was mistakenly flagged as “positive.” Minutes later, the team realized they had confused her with someone else and changed her label to “negative.”

Moraes’ demand for fast results, Tagliaferro said, meant the task force had to cut corners. “I can go into full detail,” he said, “but it won’t meet the speed you all need.”

The woman mistakenly labeled “positive” was likely Vildete da Silva Guardia, a 74-year-old retiree. Even with a corrected report, she remained in jail — and was only released 21 days later due to severe intestinal bleeding.

Vildete was later hauled from her home to prison and later handed a sentence of 11 years and 11 months. More than a year on, the grandmother remains behind bars in a wheelchair, her bids for medical release repeatedly refused.

A “shameful stain on the Supreme Court”

Ademir Domingos Pinto da Silva, a 54-year-old street vendor from southern Brazil, wasn’t even present at the January 8 riots. He arrived later that night at the military camp in Brasília to sell flags and T-shirts. Police blocked him from leaving, and he was detained.

He was labeled “positive” not for any act of violence, but for tweets from 2018 criticizing Lula and the Workers’ Party. None of them mentioned January 8, or even the 2022 election. His report was signed by the disinformation unit and used to justify four months in prison and a criminal conviction. He now wears an ankle monitor and is required to complete community service.

His lawyer called the case “a shameful stain on the Supreme Court” and said he was convicted “without a single justice reading his file.”

“We can’t afford to sit around philosophizing.”

Sources close to the investigation revealed that Moraes' representative, Kusahara, “basically told the judges what to do,” despite holding no official position in the court.

Kusahara left no doubt that the purpose of the operation was to determine who should stay in jail. “We have 1,200 detainees, and most will be released,” she wrote on January 13, 2023. “We can’t afford to sit around philosophizing.”

Kusahara scolded the team, saying, “I need this done with caution, but not at your TSE pace. Sorry to say, but you guys are spoiled.”

Tagliaferro raised concerns, pointing out that his team had “never done this before,” and the unit was “created for something else.” His objection underscored the illegal nature of the operation. The TSE’s disinformation unit had no mandate to conduct investigations.

“Does the team have the women’s positive reports handy so I can print and show them to the Justice?”

The group’s messages make it clear that Moraes dictated their activities. On March 8, 2023, the STF made headlines by announcing the release of 149 women on International Women’s Day. Five days earlier, Kusahara asked the WhatsApp group, “Does the team have the women’s positive reports handy so I can print and show them to the Justice?”

Moraes’ release of female detainees was celebrated by the media as “compassion.”

But leaked chats show the truth: the women were kept in jail two extra months so Moraes could stage the “liberation” on a symbolic date — using the same “positive/negative” reports.

“Can I reach out to partners?”

Later on March 3, Kusahara wrote, “I’m going to pass on an instruction from the Justice: Ask Eduardo to check whether they’ve participated in any WhatsApp or Telegram groups about the coup.”

In an effort to comply, Tagliaferro asked if he could reach out to “partners” — unaccountable fact-checkers and academics that could infiltrate private group chats and collect data for the court. Kusahara told him to bypass official government channels and send the request directly to a personal email account used by Moraes. “I already told him you’ll be writing,” she added.

Moraes’ task force thereby outsourced political espionage to civilians acting as spies, with no warrants or legal chain of command.

“A distortion typical of authoritarian regimes”

Legal experts are unanimous: the STF and TSE broke all legal boundaries.

Marco Aurélio Mello, former Supreme Court Justice, called Moraes’ power grab “nefarious.” and the Jan 8 sentences “disproportionate.” Said Mello, “I cannot understand how they can be sentenced to 15, 16, 17 years in prison. Those are sentences for murderers or armed robbers, not for rioters or vandals.”

Attorney André Marsíglia, a freedom of expression specialist, said the court’s creation of illegal reports represents “an unconstitutional takeover of prosecutorial functions — a distortion typical of authoritarian regimes, where the law is weaponized as a tool of revenge.”

Ives Gandra da Silva Martins, a respected  90‑year‑old law scholar, says Moraes turned the task force into “a kind of guardian of what may or may not be said in Brazilian democracy.”

“Because we have already lived through dictatorships, and we don’t want any more.”

This is a portrait of a judiciary turned into a political weapon.

Jailing people for opinions, censoring critics, and spying on citizens is something no democracy tolerates.

Last week, President Lula told the New York Times, “The democratic state of law for us is a sacred thing, because we have already lived through dictatorships, and we don’t want any more.”

But today, it is Lula and his emissary, Moraes, who have destroyed the democratic state of law and turned Brazil into a dictatorship where the expression of political dissent is grounds for imprisonment.

We requested comments from the STF, the TSE, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Brazilian Army, Moraes, and other individuals in the WhatsApp group. None responded by the time of publication.

Read the full investigation by @david_agape_ & @EliVieiraJr here:



/ENDcivilizationworks.org/cw-master-blog…

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