Minister Cármen Lúcia analyzes conflicts between André Mendonça and Alexandre de Moraes in the STF

Minister Cármen Lúcia, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), sees errors by both Minister André Mendonça and Minister Alexandre de Moraes in the measures that took the court to the epicenter of an institutional crisis, and has not yet defined which of them will gain her support.

Moraes and Mendonça compete for Cármen's vote in search of the hegemony of their respective groups in the Supreme Court, and the judge's position is considered decisive in the deliberations that the plenary must make on the conduct of the two ministers.

The court will discuss, on the one hand, whether there was arbitrariness in the methods used by Mendonça in the investigations into Banco Master and the INSS (National Social Security Institute), and which resulted in the report in which the PF (Federal Police) names Moraes as the interlocutor of former banker Daniel Vorcaro.

On the other hand, the STF will evaluate the regularity of Moraes' act in using the fake news inquiry to request an investigation against Mendonça for abuse of authority, administrative improbity and criminal liability.

Before Moraes decided to launch a counterattack, on Thursday (3), Cármen even called him and indicated that he sympathized with the situation of public exposure. On Tuesday (1st), Mendonça removed the confidentiality of the PF report that showed Vorcaro's conversations with the minister, including a message in which the banker asked whether he should leave the country, on the eve of being arrested, in 2025.

Moraes, according to an assistant, understood his colleague's call as a wave, although Cármen did not guarantee him her support in future votes.

What came next — the use of the fake news inquiry to counterattack Mendonça — didn’t please her either. The minister reported to a person close to her a feeling of perplexity with her two colleagues and with the extent to which the internal erosion of the Supreme Court had reached.

She has told aides that she is aware that her vote is under dispute and that there are even informal bets in the legal world on which current she would align herself with. The minister, however, says that she will decide exclusively based on the records, the full text of which she has not yet accessed.

Moraes has the support of ministers Gilmar Mendes, Flávio Dino and Cristiano Zanin. Mendonça is counting on Luiz Fux, Kassio Nunes Marques and Edson Fachin. According to an advisor at the top of the STF, Minister Dias Toffoli is left out of the votes, as he declared himself suspected of acting in the Master cases.

Both Mendonça and Moraes tell interlocutors that they trust Cármen's adherence to their respective groups, which could reconfigure the correlation of forces and alliances that exist today in the Supreme Court.

Mendonça's allies say they believe in the minister's awareness of the bad message that will be sent to society if the court turns a blind eye to the seriousness of having a Supreme Court minister under suspicion of being part of Vorcaro's network of influence.

A person close to the Master's rapporteur said that Cármen built a reputation for absolute integrity throughout his years on the bench and that voting to alleviate the burden for a colleague would be putting all of that to waste.

Those around Moraes claim that Cármen has already demonstrated that she is against the adoption of arbitrary procedures under the pretext of responding to society's outcry, as on the occasion when she voted to recognize the partiality of former judge Sergio Moro in cases involving President Lula (PT), in 2021.

"Everyone has the right to a fair trial before an impartial judge or tribunal," she said at the time. "This does not mean that we do not want, are against or are passing judgment on the fight against corruption, which is mandatory and needs to be done."

For an interlocutor of Moraes, if the plenary confirms Mendonça's understanding, there will be room for any magistrate to investigate a colleague, turning the Supreme Court into a "free-for-all". Mendonça understands that his colleague can do the same within the scope of the fake news investigation.

The pro-Moraes group's reading is that Mendonça acted deliberately to expose him, ordering the PF to investigate suspicions against the minister in spite of a prior decision by the plenary, in violation of the Supreme Court's internal regulations.

In the current division of the court, Cármen is aligned with Mendonça, for example, in defending the implementation of a code of conduct for the STF, a proposal for which she is rapporteur. On the other hand, she accompanied Moraes in all the votes on the criminal action regarding the attempted coup d'état.

The minister's interlocutors claim that she does not have unrestricted alignment with either wing and that her votes are guided by the Constitution. The minister has expressed concern about the institutional weight of the crisis, given a potential catastrophic impact for the STF.