Fake news probe fuels Bolsonaro-court crisis

Bloomberg

Brazil’s federal police targeted allies of President Jair Bolsonaro as part of an investigation mandated by the Supreme Court into the spread of fake news, potentially fuelling an institutional crisis between the three branches of government. Search and seizure orders were carried out in six states under a probe led by Justice Alexandre de Moraes. In his decision, Moraes wrote that the targeted people use social media to spread fake news and personal attacks, and in turn destabilise democracy in the country.
“Evidence indicates a criminal association dedicated to the dissemination of false news, offensive attacks on several people, the authorities and the institutions, among them the Supreme Court, with flagrant hateful content,” he wrote in his legal dispatch distributed by the Supreme Court’s press office. He wrote that the result was a “subversion of order.”
Bolsonaro and the Supreme Court have been at odds on a number of issues, particularly after the court supported restrictive measures imposed by governors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, against the president’s push to reopen the economy.