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Comment by coliveira | Hacker News Reader

The goal of this persecution is not necessarily to jail Glenn Greenwald. What they want is to muddle the discourse and to discredit the journalists involved in this reporting. Let's remember that the group of prosecutors in question are supporters of the current government and the ex-judge is now the justice minister, a position he occupied just after releasing "dirt" on the government opponents to facilitate the presidential election. They have resorted in the last few years to all kinds of political and judicial tricks to silence their opponents through courts. This is exactly the kind of manipulation that was exposed by Glenn Greenwald.

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> a position he occupied just after releasing "dirt" on the government opponents to facilitate the presidential election

That judge went after one of the largest corruption scandals of our age. There's no evidence he did so in order to acquire a political position: at the heyday of the prosecutions against the workers party, the current president (who made the judge one of his ministers) wasn't even widely known by the population.

On the other hand, Greenwald, who works for The Intercept and is funded by Pierre Omidyar (one of Ebay's founders), has a very strong leftist agenda (he's a regular in communist conventions and whatnot, for that matter), and has been working in all ways possible to discredit the current government while praising the previous government which was impeached -- the one whose party members have been convicted by various crimes, mostly corruption related. It's hard to argue that Greenwald was exposing some sort of manipulation by the judicial system. He was trying to manipulate the media by creating a narrative using information that he acquired illegally, and that he couldn't use to demonstrate wrongdoing in the end of the story.

>It's hard to argue that Greenwald was exposing some sort of manipulation by the judicial system.

It's not hard to argue at all - it's exactly what he did.

The leaked texts make it clear that the prosecutor's office and the judge (Moro) had clear political motivations for taking down the front-running candidate in the last election and that they abused their powers to do so.

> The leaked texts make it clear that the prosecutor's office and the judge (Moro) had clear political motivations for taking down the front-running candidate in the last election and that they abused their powers to do so.

At the time the bulk of the investigations were happening, Lula wasn't even running for president, and the elections were quite far away (4-6 years), so you can't argue he was in the front-run of the election.

That's false, Lula had always been the frontrunner in popular polls for the 2018 election. He was convicted by the ex-judge in the year before and jailed a few months before the election. Moreover, just a few days before the election ex-judge Moro and his group was actively providing"dirty" about Bolsonaro's opponent to the press, even though he had already negotiated a position in Bolsonaro's cabinet.

All this political activity is revealed by Greenwald's reporting on the leaked messages.

The "dirt" you're referring to is a large amount of criminal activity that lead to the the most important figures in the workers party to jail. Are you implying that all the evidences that lead to the prosecution of those politicians were created out of nowhere for political purposes?

Bolsonaro's rival in 2018's election was Mr. Haddad. Conveniently, ex-judge Moro and his group decided to prosecute him a few weeks before elections. Greenwald's reporting shows that this was politically motivated, like most actions of this supposedly "unbiased" group self-labeled "car wash operation".

Please provide sources showing that Moro prosecuted Haddad a few weeks before the elections.

Also, do you really believe that could have changed the outcome of the elections?

It's interesting to note that Greenwald keeps playing the key that Moro did "politically motivated" actions (disregarding the fact the legal actions against the worker's party went through about a dozen judges beyond Moro), while Greenwald himself is doing "journalism" that is "politically motivated".

That's a fundamental misunderstanding. Greenwald, think what you want about his political ideas (which are not entirely on the left spectrum), has no responsibility to be politically unbiased. On the contrary, he is very upfront about his political thinking (against the powerful, as he puts it). He has complete right to work on journalism independent of these views. This is part of his freedom of activity and expression as a journalist and it is ensured by the Brazilian laws. On the other hand, members of the judiciary, responsible for handling criminal matters, have NO RIGHT whatsoever to act based on their political preferences, as this goes directly against the mission of the judiciary. They also have NO RIGHT to maintain hidden coordination with prosecutors of the case. The prosecutors have NO RIGHT to maintain hidden coordination with superior instances about cases they're handling, neither they have the right to use the media to publish partial information that will help make their case in the public view. These are all activities that have been associated to the group lead by ex-judge Moro.

I'm still waiting to see the sources that show Moro interfering in the elections by suing the workers' party candidate a few weeks before the elections.

A few points:

1. The judge can talk to anyone (freedom of expression here). He would incur in a crime if his ruling favored one side disregarding the evidences

2. Greenwald associated himself with a group that hacked Moro's phone so that they could steal potentially incriminating information. He's being prosecuted because of that act, not because of his political agenda, or because "the government" is trying to cease his freedom of expression

3. The uncovered conversations between Moro and the prosecutors didn't uncover wrongdoing, as far as the law is concerned. Moro was open about his talks with the prosecutors and defense about 4 years ago, so that alleged "coordination" wasn't exactly "hidden"

4. Moro didn't "lead" any groups. All the cases that put many workers' party leaders in jail were judged by many other judges, in different stances of the judiciary, including the supreme court which is highly favorable of the workers party to this day

In essence this whole story is a smoke screen to try to incriminate a Judge and "forget" about the crimes committed by the workers party leaders by stating that "because Moro talked to prosecutors, the rulings were biased", and by stating that "a heroic journalist is having his freedoms of expression persecuted" while that journalist committed a crime exactly on the grounds of stopping other people to communicate by invading and stealing data from their devices.

Is attacking Grewnwald's character relevant here?

Anyways, if it is, Greenwald has been one of the most outspoken critics of many aspects of the Russiagate accusations against Trump(1); and in consideration of your aforementioned "liberal agenda" of his, it hardly makes any sense at all to label him on this hand a Trump defender--as he has been accused of--and on the other a 'liberal commie.'

1-https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-w...

I'm not attacking "Greenwald's character". I just observe that he uses his role of a journalist to push particularly hard for a leftist political agenda.

Greenwald has been criticizing Russiagate, but he's certainly not supporting Trump. He's very far from being a Trump defender if you've been following his work.

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