The former defense minister arrives at trial in the Federal Supreme Court on charges of having “subjectively adhered to” to the group led by former President () who tried to give one.
According to the Attorney General, the general’s actions and omissions in configure non-compliance with his legal duty to protect democracy.
“In circumstances in which he could and should have acted to prevent the results, the defendant refrained from complying with the duties of protection and vigilance to which he was obliged by Article 142, caput, of the Constitution,” says Gonet.
Paulo Sérgio’s defense points to a contradiction in the position of (Attorney General’s Office). The former minister says he cannot be accused of being silent because he had the discussions about the scammer drafts.
“About the meeting of 07/12/2022, General Paulo Sérgio adopted a similar stance that of General Freire Gomes by warning the President of the Republic about the severity and consequences of the eventual adoption of exception measures, seeking to dissuade him,” says lawyer Andrew Fernandes.
Paulo Sérgio Nogueira was a four -star army general ,. Already at the end of her career, she had no great ambitions.
He ended up having one. With the resignation of former defense minister Fernando Azevedo in 2021, the three armed forces chiefs decided to resign the positions together.
Paulo Sérgio was invited to take charge of the army in March of that year. In 2022, he became Bolsonaro Defense Minister
See what weighs against Paulo Sérgio, according to the complaint of PGR.
URN SUPERVISION
Paulo Sérgio was Minister of Defense when the Armed Forces acted as one of the supervisory entities invited by the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) for the 2022 dispute.
The final report of the military inspection did not identify evidence of fraud or vulnerabilities in the electronic voting system. It only made suggestions for improvements in the electoral process.
The PGR says that Paulo Sérgio maintained a troubled relationship with the TSE and refused to disclose the report regarding the first round of the elections, in a purposeful way.
“The postponement of the delivery of the inspection report of the electronic voting system was due to the deliberate will of defendants Jair Bolsonaro and Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, who acted with the purpose of keeping out of public opinion the findings of official document that confirmed the lack of fraud or vulnerabilities that would doubt the result of the ballot boxes,” Gonet says in their final allegations.
The defense of the former minister states that the PGR contradicts itself in the complaint. Gonet says the scammers tried to enter fake information in the Armed Forces report – but Paulo Sérgio’s lawyer points out that they were unsuccessful.
“How to say that General Paulo Sérgio was part of the criminal organization if, according to the complaint, it would have been precisely he that prevented the criminal organization from inserting in the report that there was fraud in the elections?” Asks Andrew.
The lawyer also denies that there was delay in the delivery of the Armed Forces report, because the work plan produced by the military provided for the completion of the document only in early 2023 ,.
‘Contact line with the enemy’
In the final allegations, the PGR states that one of the evidence of Paulo Sérgio’s performance against the TSE and the electronic ballot boxes would be the way the former minister referred to the electoral court during the Bolsonaro meeting with the first level of the government in July 2022.
In his speech, Paulo Sérgio used military terms to refer to the TSE. He said he was in the “line of contact with the enemy”, which would “break here and start my operation” and planned to be “in each phase by pressing” TSE for safety and transparency.
“We have rewarding meetings for us to see what can be done, what actions can be taken so that we can have transparency, security, audit conditions and that the elections go the way we dream. And the Lord, with what we see in everyday life, have the success of reelecting it and that is the desire of us all,” said the general to Bolsonaro.
The PGR says that Paulo Sérgio’s comments fed serious suspicions about the TSE. “The defendant built a war metaphor that […] He was instigated his interlocutors to align with the offensive idealized by Jair Bolsonaro, transforming the electoral dispute into a true ‘political war’, “he adds.
The defense of the general countered the accusation stating that Paulo Sérgio spent 48 years in the army and that the terms employees were “commonplace in the Castrense”. “It is not up to the ilation brought by that General Paulo Sérgio led a ‘political war’,” he concludes.
Scammer meetings
The complaint says that after the victory of (PT) in the 2022 presidential election, the heads of the Armed Forces were summoned to meetings with Bolsonaro in the palace of Alvorada.
According to the PGR, the first meetings dealt with the installation of camps in front of the barracks and the truck stoppage. Over time, the conversations “have incorporated increasingly direct suggestions of breakdown of the democratic order.”
Paulo Gonet states that the general acted to ensure that the scammer measures were accepted by the military summit. The prosecution also says, on the other hand, that Paulo Sérgio warned Bolsonaro about the severity of the minutes presented to the heads of the Armed Forces.
The defense of the former minister pointed out that Paulo Sérgio served to convince the president not to sign “a crazy” to endanger the cohesion of the Armed Forces. She says it was for this concern that the General summoned a meeting with the military chiefs a week after Bolsonaro presented the scammer draft.
“[O objetivo era] Close a consensus contrary to the adoption of any exception measure, among the three force commanders, aiming to determine the president to implement any measure in this regard, “he says.
