The now-former Justice Minister Sergio Moro was perhaps the most influential figure in Brazilian politics in the 2010s. His actions helped impeach President Dilma Rousseff, imprison ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and shield a third former head of state — Fernando Henrique Cardoso — from investigation.
Now, after resigning from Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet on Friday, accusing his boss of meddling in the Federal Police, he may trigger the downfall of yet another president.
Without Mr. Moro’s help in imprisoning Lula — who was leading the polls at the time — it is likely that Mr. Bolsonaro would have never been elected. And without the political clout provided by Mr. Moro’s presence in his cabinet, President Bolsonaro might not have survived his chaotic first year in office.
Mr. Moro rose to international anticorruption superstardom as a federal judge overseeing the most prominent cases of the Operation Car Wash investigation. In fact, as The Intercept revealed, he may have been surreptitiously quarterbacking the entire investigation that threw Brazilian politics into chaos, paving the way first for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and later the election of Mr. Bolsonaro.
Sergio Moro then embraced president-elect Bolsonaro, abandoning the bench and becoming the new Justice Minister, helping to convince many who were otherwise wary of the extreme-right former Army captain to throw their political support behind his government.
With one eye on his own future political prospects — perhaps even as a candidate in the 2022 presidential election — Sergio Moro abandoned the Bolsonaro ship as it began to take on water.
Search
