Social Communications Minister Paulo Pimenta on Sunday supported the decision by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to include billionaire Elon Musk in an ongoing investigation into obstruction of justice, incitement to commit crimes, and the “willful criminal instrumentalization” of X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, which Mr. Musk owns. Justice Moraes is overseeing several criminal probes into anti-democratic behavior on social media.
“We will not be intimidated,” Mr. Pimenta, the chief spokesperson for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, wrote on X. “Our country is sovereign and no one is going to impose their authoritarian will and enforce the logic that money puts their ‘business model’ above the Constitution.”
The dispute between Mr. Musk and Justice Moraes began last week after U.S. journalist Michael Shellenberger posted a thread including the so-called “Twitter Files Brazil,” a name that echoes a similar conspiracy theory, the “Twitter Files.”
On Saturday, Mr. Musk shared Mr. Shellenberger’s findings and promised to lift all restrictions on accounts banned in Brazil by the courts for publishing anti-democratic content. He then addressed Justice Moraes directly on the platform, asking him why he was “demanding so much censorship in Brazil.”
For more than five years, Justice Moraes has presided over the controversial “fake news inquiry,” which has no clear object and has been used for different purposes. In 2019, the court used the inquiry to censor an article published by the online magazine Crusoé that linked then-Chief Justice Dias Toffoli to corrupt dealings by the construction firm Odebrecht. In 2022, Justice Moraes censored a digital outlet for publishing a fake story claiming that a major gang leader had declared his vote for Lula.
As The Brazilian Report showed, a group of pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers launched an international campaign to portray Brazil as a dictatorship with no freedom of speech, and the investigations against the former president as a political witch hunt. Justice Moraes is a prime target of this mission.
Digital Policy Secretary João Brant, who works under Mr. Pimenta, said on X that Mr. Musk has “no real commitment to freedom of speech,” and “has decided to defend coup plotters and escalate the issue for political (possibly also commercial) reasons, probably anticipating non-compliance” with electoral court decisions ahead of the upcoming mayoral elections in Brazil in October.
Back in late 2023, Mr. Musk denied that his company had any responsibility for the hijacking of Brazilian First Lady Rosângela da Silva’s account on X. Mr. Musk visited Brazil in 2022, and met with far-right then-President Bolsonaro. He was awarded the Defense Order of Merit medal for unexplained reasons.
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