The Brazilian Federal Police revealed today, Thursday, that they ‘found’ in the house of Anderson Torres, Minister of Justice in the government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), the draft of a plan to change the result of last October’s general elections, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won.
According to the local press, the document was obtained during a raid on Tuesday.
The document’s purpose was for the former president to decree a State of Defense at the headquarters of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) in Brasília to change the results of the elections.
After the publication, Torres admitted on his Twitter account the existence of the text but defended that it was “published out of context” and contributed to “feed fallacious narratives” against him.
“In my house, there was a pile of documents to dispose of, where the material described in the report was most likely found. Everything would be taken for shredding in due course to the MJSP (Ministry of Justice),” he said.
“We were the first ministry to deliver management reports for the transition. I respect Brazilian democracy. I have a clear conscience about my ministry performance,” he said.
The Federal Supreme Court (STF) ordered this week the imprisonment of Torres, who served as Secretary of Public Security of the Federal District until last Sunday when thousands of Bolsonar supporters stormed the buildings of the Congress, the STF, and the Planalto Palace.
After the events, the former minister condemned the acts of violence and regretted that “absurd hypotheses of any kind of connivance of mine with the barbarities we witnessed” were raised.
Torres is currently on vacation in Orlando, United States, where Bolsonaro has been staying since the end of December.