Messias criticized Lava Jato “for criminalizing politics” in theory

The minister of AGU (General Attorney’s Office), Jorge Messias, criticized the actions of Lava Jato in his doctoral thesis. According to the president’s minister (PT), the operation’s performance was “superficial and irresponsible” and ended up “criminalize politics and state action”. Read the of academic work (PDF – 4 MB).

In the thesis, the minister also criticizes the management of former presidents (MDB) e (PL), defines the impeachment of the former president (PT) as “coup” and analyzes how the STF (Supreme Federal Court) was placed at the center of public debate over the years. Messiah is the to the vacancy opened in the Supreme Court with the retirement of minister Luís Roberto Barroso.

Here are excerpts from the work on President Lula:

• “In this context, Lula’s foreign policy, in stark contrast to the previous government, placed the environmental issue at the center of its concerns, as shown by the holding of the Amazon Summit in August 2023, President Lula’s trip to COPs 27 and 28, in addition to the organization, in Belém, of COP30, in 2025”;

• “In this chapter, it was demonstrated that the Lula government’s transition team prepared a broad and in-depth diagnosis of the policies implemented since 2016, and especially since the Bolsonaro government. The report concluded that the adopted strategy disrupted the development process, eroded social policies and destroyed the environmental framework”;

• “If, since the 1990s, there was already a significant percentage of voters who were opposed to the PT, following Operation Lava Jato and the rise of Bolsonarism, this movement was organized in such a way as to be able to structure the political debate and offer its own radicalized leadership. In this sense, President Lula’s 3rd term faces greater difficulties than those observed during other PT governments, as there is an opposition radicalized, organized and popular since the 1st of January 2023”;

Here are excerpts from the work on Lava Jato:

• “It was also a response to the Lava Jato investigations, which, in a somewhat superficial and irresponsible way, ended up criminalizing state politics and action”;

• “The political crisis naturally arose from other factors, such as the instability deliberately caused by the Lava Jato operation, the economic crisis since 2015 and the loss of parliamentary support on the part of the Dilma Rousseff government”;

• “Precisely at a time when public investments were being most contested, with Operation Lava Jato seeking to attest that any state intervention would be the result of the actions of a criminal organization”.

Here are excerpts from the work on Bolsonaro:

• “It is true that many of the populist leaders – Trump, Bolsonaro and Milei – became known for their appearances on television, but the organization and mobilization of their respective support bases seems to have taken place mainly over the internet”;

• “The Bolsonaro government brought a new round of reduction of rights, which included pension reform, reduction of the bargaining power of unions, flexibilization of paid time off and review of numerous workplace safety standards”;

• “Bolsonaro, especially, managed to stimulate and articulate a new stance in relation to risk, forging an organized political movement with relative roots in society. Bolsonaroism denies the risks arising from global warming, industrial pollution, agricultural pesticides, a possible cyclical reversal of the economy, the dollarization of bank accounts, Covid-19, the reduction in vaccination coverage, anything goes on social media, international isolation”.

Here are excerpts from the work on the STF:

• “Between 2012 and 2018, criticism from the left multiplied about the conservatism and authoritarianism of the judiciary and the STF, which were acting in a partisan manner to the detriment of the interests of the Workers’ Party and the workers and social movements themselves. The arrest of former president Lula, as well as the denial of registration of his candidacy in 2018, reinforced the censorship”;

• “The STF managed to stop the abuses of car wash, reverse unfair decisions made by lower courts and face the coup threats that gained renewed momentum with Bolsonaro’s arrival as president”;

• “In addition, the Judiciary, whether in lower courts or in the STF itself, has been urged to decide on major national issues. In 2012, Barroso noted that: ‘only in the last 12 months, the STF decided on same-sex unions, termination of gestation of anencephalic fetuses and racial quotas. Previously, it had decided on research with embryonic stem cells, nepotism and demarcation of indigenous lands’”.

The thesis was defended in 2024 to obtain a doctorate in Development, Society and International Cooperation through the postgraduate program at UnB (University of Brasília).