The Briefing
- Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) spent more than seven hours on Tuesday without resolving whether Justice Alexandre de Moraes can be formally investigated over alleged contacts with a jailed banker.
- A narrower procedural question — whether to merge Moraes's case with a related one against Justice André Mendonça — ended in a 4-3 split, but a last-minute "vista" request from Justice Flávio Dino kept the outcome unofficial.
- Two justices sat out entirely: Kassio Nunes Marques cited his role running next month's elections, and Dias Toffoli cited his own past rulings on the same underlying case.
- Nothing is scheduled yet for Moraes's case, while the related matter against Mendonça stays on the calendar for September 23 — less than three weeks before Brazilians vote for president.
A procedural fight, not a verdict on Moraes
Tuesday's marathon session at the STF was billed as a reckoning for one of its own justices, but the court never actually reached a vote on opening an investigation into Alexandre de Moraes. Instead, the eight justices present spent the day on a narrower, thornier question: should the petition examining Moraes's alleged ties to banker Daniel Vorcaro (Pet 16.662) be folded into a separate case scrutinizing Justice André Mendonça's handling of that same evidence (Pet 16.704), or kept apart, as court president Edson Fachin had proposed? Opening the session, Fachin urged colleagues to keep their focus narrow: "we judge facts and legal questions, not people," he said, adding that disagreement was legitimate but personal confrontation was not.
How the vote split — and why it isn't final
Court dean Gilmar Mendes argued that letting one justice control which colleagues get investigated created what he called a "mafia-like relationship," and pushed to fold the two cases together under a single, re-drawn rapporteur. Cristiano Zanin and Moraes himself sided with him, with Moraes stressing that the petition against him carries no formal request to open an investigation — only a bid by the federal prosecutor general's office to have the whole underlying inquiry thrown out. Flávio Dino also argued for merging the cases, at one point asking colleagues, "are we going to invent a special procedure for something this serious?" But after casting that vote, Dino asked to review the file further — a "vista" request that, under court president Fachin's ruling, meant his vote didn't count toward the final tally.
That left the count at 4 to 3 in favor of keeping the cases separate, with Fachin, Mendonça, Luiz Fux and Cármen Lúcia making up the majority; a colleague pressed Fachin to log Dino's vote anyway, but Dino declined. Cármen Lúcia, for her part, told colleagues the spectacle had left her "ashamed" and had caused what she called a civic malaise among ordinary Brazilians of the more than five-hour debate.
From a banker's phone to a court in crisis
The fight traces back to Operation Compliance Zero, the federal probe into the collapse of Banco Master and its owner, Daniel Vorcaro. While reviewing material pulled from Vorcaro's seized phone, Mendonça's team found a contact linked to Moraes and split that material into its own case file — the very petition now at the center of Tuesday's fight. What makes the matter serious enough to divide the court is the substance behind it: investigators say Vorcaro exchanged roughly fifty messages with that contact, and separately, Moraes's own family is tied to Banco Master through a 131-million-reais contract between the bank and his wife's law firm, a deal Moraes reviewed and edited more than once, according to reporting carried by O Liberal. Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet, whose own name surfaces in messages tied to the case, chose to attend the session in person rather than send a deputy, even as his office publicly rejected any suggestion he would need to step aside, according to Poder360.
Washington's shadow returns
Partway through the session, Dino raised a different pressure point: fresh press reports that Washington could revive Magnitsky Act sanctions, this time targeting him and Gilmar Mendes alongside Moraes. The United States had already sanctioned Moraes under that law in July 2025 over his rulings against former president Jair Bolsonaro, then quietly lifted the designation in December. A Financial Times report picked up by Reuters in mid-August found the measure was back under discussion in Washington, though no final decision had been reached. Dino told colleagues the reports changed nothing about how he'd handle the case, calling any such pressure illegitimate.
What comes next
For now, Moraes's case has no return date; the matter involving Mendonça remains set for September 23. The court is currently working with 10 of its 11 seats filled: the seat vacated by Luís Roberto Barroso's October 2025 retirement remains empty after the Senate rejected President Lula's nominee, Jorge Messias, this past April. The unresolved fight now heads into the campaign's final stretch before Brazilians choose a new president on October 4.
