STF forms majority to make defendant Moraes’ former advisor at TSE
The Federal Supreme Court (STF) formed a majority this Sunday to open criminal proceedings against Eduardo Tagliaferro, former advisor to minister Alexandre de Moraes at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). He was denounced by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) for acting against the legitimacy of the Brazilian electoral process and acting to undermine investigations into undemocratic acts.
Case rapporteur, Moraes voted to receive the PGR’s complaint and was accompanied by ministers Cristiano Zanin and Flávio Dino. The trial will take place in the Court’s virtual plenary session until next Friday, the 14th.
The PGR indicted Tagliaferro for the crimes of attempting to abolish the Democratic Rule of Law, violation of functional secrecy, coercion during the process and obstruction of an investigation involving a criminal organization. Combined, the sentences can reach 22 years in prison.
The complaint points out that, between May 2023 and August 2024, he disclosed internal dialogues between STF and TSE employees to serve the interests of a criminal organization. According to Moraes’ vote, the former advisor’s conduct “differs from a mere breach of secrecy because it directly affects the state’s capacity to investigate crimes involving criminal organizations, creating an environment of institutional distrust and favoring those being investigated”.
“The embarrassment to the investigations materialized through the selective disclosure of confidential information, creating doubts about the legitimacy of the investigations, through the propagation of narratives without evidentiary support alleging irregularities, through coordination with other people being investigated to delegitimize the institutions and through the acquisition of a new telephone device on the eve of a police hearing presenting equipment other than that actually used”, added the minister, in his vote.
According to the PGR, Tagliaferro “freely, consciously and voluntarily, in the period between 15.05.2023 and 15.08.2024, violated functional secrecy, by revealing to the press and making public dialogues on confidential matters, which he maintained with employees of the Federal Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court as Chief Advisor of the TSE’s Special Advisory to Combat Disinformation, to meet interests illicit acts of a criminal organization responsible for disseminating fictitious news against the health of the electronic voting system and the actions of the STF and TSE, as well as for the attempted coup d’état and violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law”.
The complaint
The Prosecutor’s Office also states that the former advisor, after “evading Brazil” to Italy, “publicly threatened to reveal, on foreign soil, new confidential functional information that he obtained as a result of his position in the TSE’s Special Advisory Office for Combating Disinformation, with the aim of once again favoring his own interest and that of those being investigated” in processes that investigated undemocratic acts.
In the 17-page complaint, the PGR claims that Tagliaferro had handed over to the Federal Police a cell phone that he did not use frequently, with the supposed intention of circumventing investigations into his conduct.
“The police findings confirm (…) that Eduardo Tagliaferro, in yet another gesture of trying to obstruct investigations, acquired a Xiaomi Redmi 13C cell phone to go to the Federal Police to give a statement, under the possibility of having the device seized, when in fact the device he was actually using was an Apple iPhone, aiming to hide the execution of his conduct from the authorities,” says the text.
