[rad-green] As Lula Emerges From Prison, US Media Ignore How Washington Helped Put Him There

*https://fair.org/home/as-lula-emerges-from-prison-us-media-ignore-how-washington-helped-put-him-there/
<https://fair.org/home/as-lula-emerges-from-prison-us-media-ignore-how-washington-helped-put-him-there/>*

*FAIR          NOVEMBER 14, 2019*

As Lula Emerges From Prison, US Media Ignore How Washington Helped Put Him
There
*BY BRIAN MIER <https://fair.org/author/brian-mier/>*

[image: Lula da Silva after being freed from prison]
<https://fair.org/home/as-lula-emerges-from-prison-us-media-ignore-how-washington-helped-put-him-there/>

The Brazilian Supreme Court reversed a 2018 ruling on November 7, upholding
the principle of innocent until proven guilty in the 1988 Constitution and
declaring it illegal to jail defendants before their appeals processes have
been exhausted. Within 24 hours, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
was released to an adoring crowd of hundreds of union members and social
movement activists who had maintained a camp outside the police station
where he was held, shouting “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “good
night” to him for 580 consecutive days.
[image: NYT: A Judge’s Bid to Clean Up Brazil From the Bench]

*The New York Times (8/25/17
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/world/americas/judge-sergio-moro-brazil-anti-corruption.html>)
depicted Judge Sérgio Moro as “the face of the national reckoning for
Brazil’s ruling class.” He now heads the Justice Department in the fascist
government of Jair Bolsonaro.*

The Supreme Court had previously ruled, on April 5, 2018—after a threat
<https://www.conjur.com.br/2018-nov-11/villas-boas-calculou-intervir-stf-hc-lula>
from
Brazilian Gen. Eduardo Villas Bôas—that defendants could be preemptively
jailed before their appeals processes played out. Directly afterwards,
Judge Sérgio Moro pressed for an immediate election-year arrest warrant for
the PT party founder at a moment when he was widely leading in all polls.
(The far-right candidate who won in the wake of Lula’s removal from the
race, Jair Bolsonaro
<https://fair.org/home/financial-press-cheers-election-of-fascist-in-brazil/>,
went on to name Moro his “Super Justice Minister.”)

Lula’s arrest came as part of a wide-ranging international investigation,
ostensibly aimed at corruption, called* Lava Jato* (“Car Wash”), which
involved the US Justice Department, US Security and Exchange Commission and
Swiss federal police, working with Judge Moro and a public prosecutor team
based in the conservative Brazilian city of Curitiba (*CounterSpin*, 6/21/19
<https://fair.org/home/these-revelations-really-show-the-election-was-fraudulent/>).
The only charge that prosecutors had been able to stick on Lula was that he
had committed “indeterminate acts of corruption.”
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p063dcss/player>

At the time, the Anglo media ignored US involvement in the investigation,
built Moro up as a superhero
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/world/americas/judge-sergio-moro-brazil-anti-corruption.html>,
and failed to provide any kind of critical analysis of the proceedings
against Lula, despite complaints
<https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/brazil/2017-04-19/case-lula> from
some of the world’s leading legal scholars
<https://www.change.org/p/to-supporters-of-democracy-and-social-justice-throughout-the-world-lula-da-silva-is-a-political-prisoner-free-lula?recruiter=782611930&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_medium=whatsapp&utm_content=whatsapp_share_content_2:control>
 and human rights activists
<https://www.mstbrazil.org/content/adolfo-p%C3%A9rez-esquivel-letter-support-nomination-lula-nobel-peace-prize>
that the former president was victim of a politically motivated kangaroo
court proceeding designed to remove him from the presidential elections.

There was no material evidence linking Lula to any crime. His conviction
was based on coerced
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/lula-lava-jato-case-sergio-moro-witness-forced-to-testify-corruption-brazil-20190701-0013.html>
plea bargain testimony by a single convicted criminal named Leo Pinheiro,
director of the OAS construction company, which built the building where an
apartment that featured in Lula’s case was located. Sentenced to ten years
and eight months for paying bribes to Petrobras Petroleum company, Pinheiro
originally testified that Lula had not committed any crime, then changed
his story twice
<https://www.viomundo.com.br/politica/leo-pinheiro-teve-70-da-pena-reduzida-depois-de-mudar-de-versao-duas-vezes-ligar-lula-a-corrupcao-na-petrobras-e-acusar-ex-presidente-de-manda-lo-destruir-provas.html>,
implicating Lula before having his sentence reduced to two years and six
months. His third and final story stated that Lula had received free
renovations on the beach-side apartment in exchange for political favors.

Seventy-three witnesses
<https://politica.estadao.com.br/blogs/fausto-macedo/leo-pinheiro-diz-que-reformou-triplex-do-guaruja-com-dinheiro-de-propina/>,
including executives from the OAS company, testified that neither Lula nor
anyone from his family had ever owned or lived in the apartment.
Furthermore, a judge in Brasilia determined in January 2018, as part of a
different case, that the vacant apartment still belonged to OAS
<https://jornalggn.com.br/justica/juiza-do-df-confirma-que-triplex-pertence-a-oas/>.
The prosecutors were unable to prove that the renovations had ever actually
taken place. Although Sérgio Moro had barred the press from visiting the
site, the MTST housing movement broke in and filmed a video
<https://youtu.be/djN0shGUo-4> which proved that, contrary to prosecutors
claims, the strikingly cheap-looking apartment had never had any of the
renovations listed by the prosecutors, including installation of a private
elevator and luxury appliances
<https://jornalggn.com.br/justica/a-farsa-do-triplex-de-luxo-pf-desconfiou-de-valores-da-reforma-mas-preferiu-nao-investigar/>.
The Lava Jato task force prosecutors and Judge Moro were unable to prove
<https://jus.com.br/artigos/66399/artigo-sobre-condenacao-de-lula> that
they had any legal jurisdiction over a case involving an alleged crime in a
different state, São Paulo, which has its own court system, after they
dropped an initial frivolous charge alleging a connection between the
apartment renovations and a money-laundering scheme involving the Petrobras
petroleum company. Finally, the alleged renovations, which prosecutors were
unable to prove ever took place, in an apartment that they were unable to
prove belonged to Lula, supposedly happened three years after he left
public office
<https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/entenda-cronologia-do-caso-do-triplex-do-guaruja-que-levou-condenacao-de-lula-1-21582219>,
meaning that it was legally impossible to prove abuse of authority.
[image: Time: Sergio Moro]

*“Brazilians call him SuperMoro, chanting his name on the streets of Rio de
Janeiro as if he were a soccer star,” Time‘s Bryan Walsh (4/21/16
<https://time.com/collection-post/4302096/sergio-moro-2016-time-100/>)
reported.*

When Moro, who was declared a *Time*  personality of the year in 2016 (
4/21/16
<https://time.com/collection-post/4302096/sergio-moro-2016-time-100/>),
declared Lula guilty of committing indeterminate acts of corruption
<https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/janiodefreitas/2018/01/1952105-moro-condenou-lula-por-ato-de-oficio-indeterminado-ou-seja-nao-existente.shtml>,
Western corporate media made little to no mention of prosecutorial
misconduct, which was written about extensively in independent Brazilian
media and legal publications. Moro had broken the law on multiple occasions
in his zeal to put the former president behind bars. Using a legal
loophole  dating back to the Inquisition
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p063dcss/player> that enabled him to both
oversee the investigation and rule on it, he ordered the Federal
Police to wiretap
Lula’s defense lawyers
<https://www.conjur.com.br/2016-mar-17/25-advogados-escritorio-defende-lula-foram-grampeados>.
This enabled the prosecutors to map out all possible moves by the defense
and plan their reactions in advance. Moro also illegally wiretapped
President Dilma Rousseff
<http://g1.globo.com/pr/parana/noticia/2016/03/pf-libera-documento-que-mostra-ligacao-entre-lula-e-dilma.html>,
then illegally leaked out-of-context audio to Brazil’s largest TV network
on the eve of her impeachment hearings. In 2017, US Assistant Attorney
General Kenneth Blanco bragged about informal communications with his
friends in the Lava Jato task force,
<https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/acting-assistant-attorney-general-kenneth-blanco-speaks-atlantic-council-inter-american-1>
which
violates Brazilian law by bypassing security protocols.

There was certainly enough information out there to suggest that Lula might
be the victim of a political witch hunt to keep him from becoming
president. This is, in fact, what the AFL-CIO
<https://www.pt.org.br/blog-secretarias/afl-cio-eua-brazils-former-president-lula-da-silva-has-been-jailed-in-the-southern-city-of-curitiba-since-april-7th/>
, Noam Chomsky,
<https://theintercept.com/2018/10/02/lula-brazil-election-noam-chomsky/> Angela
Davis
<https://www.resistencia.cc/en/noam-chomski-angela-davis-thomas-piketty-e-centenas-de-intelectuais-de-todo-o-mundo-lancam-manifesto-exigindo-a-liberdade-de-lula/>,
Bernie Sanders and 29 Members of Congress
<https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/bernie-sanders-hands-letter-demanding-freedom-lula-brazilian-embassy>
were
all saying at the time. However, no shadow of a doubt was allowed to fall
over the proceedings in Anglo media. In the *New Yorker* (7/13/17
<https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-most-important-criminal-conviction-in-brazils-history>),
Alex Cuadros gushed that Lula’s conviction was “the most important criminal
conviction in Brazil’s history.” And the week of Lula’s arrest, the
*Guardian* (4/3/18
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/brazil-supreme-court-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva>)
erroneously claimed that his conviction was connected to an “R$88 million
graft scheme” involving Petrobras that Judge Moro had specifically explained
in his ruling
<https://jus.com.br/artigos/66399/artigo-sobre-condenacao-de-lula> was not
the case.

Behind bars and (illegally) barred from speaking to the press, Lula
continued to run for president. Three months after he was arrested, he
still led all election polls
<https://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2018/eleicao-em-numeros/noticia/2018/08/22/pesquisa-datafolha-lula-39-bolsonaro-19-marina-8-alckmin-6-ciro-5.ghtml>,
with double the support of his nearest competitor. Then the UN Human Rights
Committee issued a ruling
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/human-rights-committee-asks-brazil-lula-run-election-180817143518950.html>,
legally binding according to both international and Brazilian law
<http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2007-2010/2009/decreto/d6949.htm>,
stating that Lula had the right to run for president. But as in the April
5, 2018, Supreme Court ruling, the judiciary decided to make an exception
to the law, specifically to bar Lula from the campaign. Less than one month
before the elections, the PT party was forced to provide a replacement
candidate.

All things considered, the electoral results were better than expected. The
PT party remained the largest party in Congress
<https://www.camara.leg.br/noticias/545857-pt-e-psl-elegem-as-maiores-bancadas-da-camara-dos-deputados/>
and
became the party with the most governors
<https://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2018/eleicao-em-numeros/noticia/2018/10/28/pt-supera-mdb-e-governara-quatro-estados-veja-quem-sao-os-eleitos.ghtml>.
Last minute candidate Fernando Haddad made it to the final round and
received 47 million votes, but it was not enough.
[image: The Intercept: Hidden Plot]

*The Intercept‘s revelations (6/9/19
<https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/>)
of judicial collusion were mentioned in the Brazilian Supreme Court ruling
that ordered Lula da Silva’s release, but were often ignored in US media
coverage of his return to freedom.*

Months after Bolsonaro took office, the *Intercept*’s Glenn Greenwald revealed
thousands of hours of social media conversations
<https://theintercept.com/series/secret-brazil-archive/> between Lava Jato
prosecutors and Moro. They showed the supposedly impartial judge giving
instructions to the prosecutors, not only on how to improve the
accusations, but on how to conduct a media strategy to commit character
assassination against Lula. They exposed collusion with a Supreme Court
Justice to issue a gag order preventing Lula from speaking to the press
during the leadup to the 2018 presidential elections, in order to aid
Bolsonaro’s campaign. They showed Lava Jato prosecution task force leader
Delton Dallagnol praying to God that Bolsonaro would win the presidential
election. Most damning of all, perhaps, is the conversation conducted
between Dallagnol and the other prosecutors, only a few hours before the
final trial, revealing that they didn’t think they had any proof
<https://theintercept.com/series/mensagens-lava-jato/>, but that Moro was
going to guarantee a conviction.

The US Department of Justice announced in March 2019 that it was going to
give Dallagnol and his Lava Jato task force $682 million to open a privately
managed “anti-corruption” foundation
<https://www.brasilwire.com/us-doj-gives-lava-jato-682-million-kickback/> in
Curitiba. The money would come from the $3.5 billion in fines
<https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/odebrecht-and-braskem-plead-guilty-and-agree-pay-least-35-billion-global-penalties-resolve>
that
the DoJ and SEC collected in Lava Jato’s process of bankrupting and
dismantling Brazil’s largest companies
<http://upsidedownworld.org/archives/brazil/manufactured-economic-crisis-brazil-paved-way-soft-coup/>
in
the leadup to the 2016 legislative coup
<https://fair.org/home/they-let-everybody-know-the-us-was-on-the-side-of-this-coup/>
against
President Rousseff.

The move was blocked by the Superior Justice Court, but it raised questions
among some US lawmakers about how deep the US government’s role went in
Lava Jato. On August 21, Rep. Hank Johnson (D.-Georgia) and 12 other
members of Congress delivered a letter
<https://hankjohnson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-johnson-colleagues-ask-doj-answers-brazil-corruption-persecution>
to
Attorney General William Barr demanding answers to a series of questions
about possible legal and ethical violations committed by the DoJ during its
partnership with Moro and Lava Jato. One of the questions reads, “Did DoJ
provide assistance with the collection or analysis of evidence compiled by
the Lava Jato Task Force and Judge Moro for President Lula’s case?”

On September 25, Rep. Raul Grijalva and 14 other members of Congress
introduced House Resolution 594
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/594/text>,
“expressing profound concern about threats to human rights, the rule of
law, democracy and the environment in Brazil.” Moro is repeatedly
criticized in the text of the resolution, which mentions the *Intercept* leaks,
and states that

Sérgio Moro, the presiding judge in da Silva’s case, acted in a clearly
biased manner toward da Silva, violating his right to a fair and impartial
judicial process under Brazilian law.

One might think that by now US corporate media would finally begin to
question the narrative that Lula is somehow guilty of corruption. Wouldn’t
American readers be interested in learning about the role their Justice
Department played in this process? Aren’t the leaked social media chats
published by the *Intercept* relevant to the story of Lula’s release,
especially since they were mentioned in the Brazilian Supreme Court ruling?
[image: NYT: Ex-President ‘Lula’ Is Freed From Prison in Brazil After
Supreme Court Ruling]

*The New York Times (11/8/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/world/americas/lula-brazil-supreme-court.html>)
waited until the 18th of 28 paragraphs to mention “questions about the
fairness of Mr. da Silva’s prosecution.”*

Unfortunately, since Lula’s release, none of the major corporate media
outlets have mentioned the US Department of Justice role in Lava Jato at
all. Although a few papers mentioned the *Intercept* revelations, they are
reframed and rendered less threatening to the narrative, presented in the
context of “raising doubts among some” about the investigation.

On the day Lula was released, *Bloomberg*  (11/8/19
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/lula-ordered-released-from-jail-following-brazil-court-ruling>)
ran an article which does not mention illegal collusion between judge and
prosecutors. It states instead:

The ex-president was convicted of corruption in 2017 and lost two appeals
since then, but he has not exhausted the entire process. He has repeatedly
denied wrongdoing and has said he’s victim of political persecution.

The *Washington Post*’s first article (11/8/19
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/former-brazilian-president-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva-to-be-released-from-prison/2019/11/08/31f9791c-0260-11ea-8341-cc3dce52e7de_story.html>)
on Lula’s release also failed to mention the corruption scandal which has
enveloped Lava Jato, although it provided a link to a previous article (
6/17/19
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/alleged-leaks-threaten-legacy-of-brazils-hero-judge-who-oversaw-vast-corruption-probe/2019/06/17/9a8d7346-8eae-11e9-b08e-cfd89bd36d4e_story.html>)
on that subject.

In two articles about Lula’s release, the *BBC* (11/9/19
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50351438>) likewise ignored
the illegal collusion between judge and prosecutors in Lava Jato.

On the day Lula was released, the *Guardian*, whose Latin America editor
Tom Phillips wrote 22 articles normalizing Bolsonaro
<https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tomphillips?page=10> in October 2018
in the leadup to the elections, made the editorial decision to rerun an *AP*
 article
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/08/lula-former-brazil-president-could-be-freed-from-jail-after-court-ruling>
that
makes no mention of the leaked social media conversations. One day later,
the *Washington Post*‘s Dom Phillips (11/8/19
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/08/lula-brazil-released-prison-supreme-court-ruling>),
who was one of the biggest cheerleaders
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/former-brazilian-president-lula-charged-in-massive-corruption-scandal/2016/09/14/a2d66cfa-7ab2-11e6-8064-c1ddc8a724bb_story.html>
for
Lula’s political imprisonment in the international media, briefly mentioned
the *Intercept* revelations and Moro’s ethical problems in the context of
an article that misrepresented Lula’s conviction as being connected to
“money laundering,” and ended with an uncritical treatment of other frivolous
charges
<https://revistaforum.com.br/politica/mpf-reconhece-que-dono-do-sitio-de-atibaia-e-fernando-bittar-e-autoriza-venda-do-imovel/>
against
the former president
<https://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/politica/2019/11/moro-contra-lula-anulada/>
.

The *New York Times* (11/8/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/world/americas/lula-brazil-supreme-court.html>)
mentioned the leaked audio messages, saying that they “made clear, for
instance, that Mr. Moro had actively advised prosecutors on strategy in the
case, conduct that legal analysts have called an ethical and legal
transgression,” then quoted Moro on the case and stated that he disputes
the idea that he acted improperly.

Despite the evidence of Lula’s innocence and illegal persecution, with the
cooperation of the US DoJ, that removed him from the 2018 presidential
elections, establishment media cling to a false narrative that, while
weakened by the subsequent actions of current “Super Justice Minister”
Moro, still attempts to damage the public image of the most popular
president in Brazilian history.

As the smear campaign continues, it is important to remember that Lula
represented a social democratic national development project, in the
tradition of what Brazilians call *desenvolvimentalismo*, based on
strategic control over natural resources and their use to fund public
services like health and education, strong minimum wage policies and labor
rights, increased access to free public universities, and strong investment
in scientific research. This is the project that was dismantled after the
2016 coup, to the benefit of corporations like Monsanto, Chevron,
ExxonMobil and Boeing. History shows that every Brazilian president who
ever tried to implement *desenvolvimentalista* policies—from Getúlio Vargas
<https://library.brown.edu/create/brazilundervargas/>, Juscelino Kubitschek
<https://library.brown.edu/create/fivecenturiesofchange/chapters/chapter-6/presidents/juscelino-kubitschek/>
 and Jango Goulart
<https://library.brown.edu/create/fivecenturiesofchange/chapters/chapter-6/presidents/joao-goulart/>
to
Rousseff and Lula—has been subjected to a coup, political imprisonment or
assassination
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/brazil-truth-commission-kubitschek-president-murdered>,
with perennial suspicion of US involvement
<https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/183.html>. And as we see corporate
media working to normalize the military coup in Bolivia (*FAIR.org*,
11/11/19
<https://fair.org/home/the-bolivian-coup-is-not-a-coup-because-us-wanted-it-to-happen/>),
it is clear that this problem is not limited to Brazil.
------------------------------

*Featured image: Lula da Silva speaking in front of the Metalworkers union
on November 9, 2019, after his release from prison. (photo: Brian Mier)*

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