Insider

Lula’s campaign social media guru exposed by recording

An unknown lawyer less than six years ago, André Janones amassed a huge social media following, a seat in Congress, and helped to decide a presidential election. Photo: Tomaz Silva/ABr

An audio recording published on Monday by news website Metrópoles shows Congressman André Janones, a savvy social media user who played a key role in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 2022 campaign, demanding an aide to surrender part of their salary to pay for his campaign expenses.

“Some people here, who I will talk to in private later, will receive a little extra salary. And they will help me pay the leftover bills from my mayoral campaign,” Mr. Janones says in the recording. According to Metrópoles, the conversation was recorded by a former aide during a February 2019 meeting.

Mr. Janones said his words were taken “out of context.”

André Janones unsuccessfully ran for mayor in his hometown of Ituiutaba, in Minas Gerais, in 2016. He later won a House seat in 2018 and was re-elected last year with 60,000 more votes than the first time, becoming the second best-voted congressman in his state.

Mr. Janones first rose to national fame urging Brazilians to support the 2018 truckers’ strike against the government of then-President Michel Temer, whom he called a “bum.”

After being elected, he increased his digital footprint by performing long live talks on social media about how to enroll in government welfare programs — which he did not help design nor was a major player in getting them passed in Congress.

Mr. Janones currently has over 8 million followers on Facebook, 2.3 million on Instagram, and over 1 million on X (formerly known as Twitter).

His rapid-firing social media artillery was a huge asset to the Lula campaign, responding to the far-right’s digital low blows with equally vicious responses. Mr. Janones took the opportunity on several episodes during the campaign to call former President Jair Bolsonaro, who ran for re-election against Lula, a “confessed” pedophile and a “sexual pervert.”

Congressman Janones said that the audio recordings are not substantial and, for this reason, did not materialize into a formal criminal complaint.

The practice of siphoning off taxpayer money by hiring people who agree to kick back a share of their salary is known in Brazil as rachadinha. Former president Jair Bolsonaro and two of his sons were under investigation for such practice.