The leader of the PL in the Chamber, deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante (RJ), said this Tuesday, 23, that he sent a letter to the United States embassy in Brazil after being forced to remove a video in which he mentioned alleged links between the PT and criminal factions. The exclusion of the content was determined by the vice-president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), minister André Mendonça.
At a press conference in the Chamber of Deputies, Sóstenes stated that he had sought out the embassy to clarify the existence of the USA’s “great suspicions” regarding the alleged financing of factions of left-wing parties in Latin America, mentioned by him in the video without evidence.
“I would never say or post something that does not match the truth. As I did not make a statement, but I said that there is a suspicion of the American government, there is no one better than the American government itself to say publicly and notoriously to the entire press and to Brazilians whether or not there is this type of suspicion”, he stated.
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Regarding the content of the post, he argued that he reproduced references that he considered “public and notorious” in reports published in the press, but that he never made any statements.
The deputy also said that he requested a public hearing with representatives of the United States government to address the matter and that he complied with the court’s removal decision within 24 hours, although he disagrees with the understanding adopted by the magistrate.
Mendonça understood that the use of the expression “there are great suspicions” did not rule out “the plausibility of illegality”. “On the contrary, the rhetorical formula used gives the statement an appearance of caution, but preserves its disinformative charge,” he wrote. Other than removal, content cannot be republished or boosted into equivalent versions.
The video posted by Sóstenes suggested the existence of suspected financing of Workers’ Party (PT) campaigns by criminal factions such as Comando Vermelho and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). The context of the speech was the recent classification of the two factions as terrorist organizations by President Donald Trump’s government.
In the video, the deputy began by refuting what he called rumors spread by “presidents of NGOs” that Trump would “send bombs and missiles” to communities due to the new classification. In the end, he associated the theme with presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ), presenting the fight against organized crime as one of his banners, and called on viewers to spread the content so that communities know the “truth of the facts”.
