Jan. 8 committee seems an unavoidable nuisance for Lula

Three and a half months after a mob of Jair Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in Brasília with false claims of a stolen election, the Brazilian far-right is planning to use a congressional hearings committee to try to change voters’ perceptions of what happened on January 8. 

The government sought to quell calls for a congressional inquiry, hoping that the case would be handled by law enforcement and the justice system alone. But after surveillance footage from the presidential palace showed a former member of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva cabinet present while hordes of pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators ransacked the building, the whole ordeal became inevitable. 

Supporters of the former Bolsonaro government say that the images of Lula’s former top security officer (who has since been fired) prove their point that the government maliciously allowed the riot to take place in order to increase its power. Optics forced the Lula government to pivot on the January 8 inquiry and support its creation.

By February, Mr. Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress had whipped enough signatures to get...