The former Attorney General of the Republic is still trying to recover his assets, which were, by order of the minister of the (Federal Supreme Court).
His defense reports having made requests to both the STF and the (Attorney General’s Office), but none of them were successful. Two cell phones, a computer, a tablet and an external hard drive were seized. The most recent requests were filed in January and October 2025, according to the defense, after the PGR ordered the investigation against Janot at the Prosecutor’s Office to be closed.
A Sheet contacted the STF, which did not respond until the publication of this text, and the PGR, which stated that it does not comment on cases that are being processed in secrecy.
Janot became an investigator, as part of the fake news investigation, after intending to kill minister Gilmar Mendes.
which completes seven years of processing this Saturday (14), is surrounded by controversies. It investigates the dissemination of false news, threats and insults against members of the court. As the process has been running in secrecy since then, there is no knowledge of the complete list of those being investigated, nor is there any transparency about its progress.
In September 2019, days after the search and seizure, Janot’s defense requested the STF that the electronic data be replicated by investigators and their devices returned.
In November of that year, analysis reports produced by the PF indicated – as pointed out by the PGR in a later document – that they had not found “defamation or plans of aggression” by Janot against STF ministers nor involvement “with social groups that aimed to defame” the court and its members.
With this PF report in hand, Moraes had already revoked the precautionary measures he had imposed on Janot in December 2019, such as the ban on him coming within 200 meters of STF ministers. However, it determined that a copy of part of the fake news investigation files, regarding Janot, be forwarded to the Prosecutor’s Office for continued investigations. On that occasion, an investigative procedure (actual news, in legal jargon) was opened at the PGR itself.
In February of the following year, in 2020, the defense once again requested the return of the seized assets. In response, Moraes stated that he sent the material about the investigation to the PGR and that requests should therefore be sent directly to .
At the end of that year, the defense says it reiterated this request to the PGR, and that there was no response. At the time, the leadership of the Public Ministry was headed by .
“[A] The aforementioned investigation lasted for more than two years, without any development, and the patient [Janot] has been deprived of his assets seized since the beginning of the investigation, greatly harming the development of his professional activities to date”, appears in an appeal from the end of 2021 signed by lawyers Bruno Salles Pereira Ribeiro and Marco Antonio Chies Martins.
The case would only resume at the PGR in June 2024, when the attorney general – who had taken over at the end of the previous year – ordered the shelving of the investigative procedure opened at the Public Ministry.
“As can be seen, all plausible investigative measures were carried out and did not provide sufficient elements to establish the criminal materiality of the facts narrated in the report that led to the investigation. Furthermore, no new measures are envisaged that justify the continuation of this investigation”, wrote Gonet, in the document to which the Sheet had access.
Faced with a new request for restitution of the assets, however, Janot’s defense states that the Public Prosecutor’s Office would indicate, months after the filing, that it had not received any seized assets and that restitution requests should be made to the STF – which, in March 2020, via Moraes, had responded that the issue should be dealt with with the PGR.
After that, the defense claims to have filed two requests as part of the fake news investigation and which have not yet been assessed.
