Supreme Court feud threatens to upend Brazil’s presidential race

A dispute between the two most powerful justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court erupted into an all-out fight late Thursday, plunging the body into an institutional crisis that threatens to reshape the country’s looming presidential election.

The rivalry reflects a broader political divide. Alexandre de Moraes became the court’s most prominent adversary of former President Jair Bolsonaro and a key figure in the institutional pushback against his movement. Justice André Mendonça, by contrast, is a Bolsonaro appointee and has often taken a more conservative view of its powers.

At the center of the latest confrontation is Banco Master SA, the failed lender under investigation in a US$10-billion bank fraud case that has shaken confidence in Brazil’s governing establishment.

On Tuesday, Mendonça unsealed private messages that federal police say were sent to Moraes by Daniel Vorcaro, the twice-arrested former owner of Banco Master.

The disclosure thrust the court back into the centre of the sprawling investigation Mendonça is overseeing while reviving calls for Moraes’ ouster.

Moraes fired back Thursday, accusing Mendonça of administrative misconduct, abuse of power, and acting impartially by directing investigators toward specific targets for personal and political reasons.

The public battle has sparked a tug-of-war among allies of both justices inside the top court, raising questions about how the institution will respond to the biggest threat to its credibility since Brazil’s 1988 Constitution made it the guardian of the country’s democracy.

October’s presidential election is only raising the stakes, especially with polls showing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, locked in a tight race that the Master turmoil has already upended multiple times.

Lula has regularly praised the court for defending democracy as it cracked down on the spread of social media disinformation and prosecuted Bolsonaro for plotting a coup after the 2022 election.

But the leftist leader, who is widely seen as a close ally of Moraes, sought to distance himself from the saga Thursday, calling for deep reforms to the Judiciary and a full investigation of the Master case “no matter who it hurts.”

“Nobody, in the name of democracy, can use their position for personal gain,” Lula said at a Friday event in Brasilia.

Flávio Bolsonaro has rushed to seize on the case to benefit a campaign that has centred on challenges to the court and efforts to free his father.

The messages have given him a chance to divert attention from his own links to Vorcaro and turn the race into a referendum on the court’s powers – a strategy his campaign believes could help him win over voters angry about the widespread corruption the Master case has revealed.

“Out with Lula! Out with Moraes!” Bolsonaro said in a social media post Wednesday. “This duo has no place left in leading the country.”

The anti-Moraes

The root of the current crisis is a power struggle between two judges that runs far deeper than the Banco Master case.

Brazil’s Supreme Court is an authoritative institution that has for two decades played an outsized role in the country’s politics, often shifting with the winds of public sentiment. It paved the way for Lula’s arrest in 2018 amid a massive corruption scandal, only to annul his convictions when the mood turned. During and after Bolsonaro’s Presidency, it served as the chief antagonist of a leader who regularly targeted democratic institutions and made false claims about its election system.

For the last seven years, no judge has wielded those powers as forcefully as Moraes, a hero to millions who hailed him as crucial to democracy – and a villain to critics to whom he embodied the court’s willingness to bend the law to expand its authority.

Mendonça, a 53-year-old Presbyterian pastor and former attorney general under Jair Bolsonaro, has routinely clashed with Moraes over perceived overreaches, including during prosecutions of hundreds of Brazilians involved in the 2023 insurrection attempt in Brasilia that followed Bolsonaro’s loss to Lula.

The justice has transformed from persistent internal dissenter into the body’s new centre of gravity, an anti-Moraes figure whose own influence has grown in large part because of the Master case.

Mendonça took over the investigation in February, after Justice Dias Toffoli stepped aside amid scrutiny of his own apparent links to Vorcaro. He’s also in charge of other explosive cases, including probes into alleged fraud in Brazil’s public pension system and corruption allegations involving one of Lula’s sons.

Now fellow justices are grappling with what to do next. Mendonça, who’s built a bloc of allies on the court, has pushed to hold a full vote of its members over whether to open a probe into Moraes.

Moraes and justices who’ve taken his side, meanwhile, are fighting back, pushing to remove Mendonça from his position overseeing the Master case, according to a person familiar with the situation who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The assessment of Moraes’ allies is that Mendonça manipulated the proceedings in an effort to use the investigation to bolster Flávio Bolsonaro’s position in the election, the person said.

Earlier this week, Mendonça became the target of a leak alleging that he, too, had met with Vorcaro in March 2025, a visit he confirmed while saying that he’d only listened to the businessman and had done nothing wrong.

Chief Justice Edson Fachin has sought to calm the waters. Late Thursday, he gave both judges, as well as the head of Brazil’s federal police and its prosecutor general, five days to provide written explanations about the case that was unsealed this week, a potential attempt to avoid a public debate over how to proceed.

On Friday, Fachin said he alone would command the court’s next steps on the duelling allegations against both justices.

But Moraes allies now view it as virtually inevitable that Mendonça will be removed from the Master case, the person said. Key members of the body remain eager to defend the court – and thus Moraes – as an institution, a position that’s left him with a stronger base of allies than Mendonça.

Election risk

Still, it’s almost certain the clash will extend through Brazil’s election, casting a shadow over the race to become its next leader.

Lula’s campaign has been unsettled by the dispute between the two judges, viewing it as a development that will likely benefit Flávio Bolsonaro, according to an adviser.

Aides disagreed over whether Lula should speak out Thursday night, but ultimately concluded that keeping him out of sight would be more damaging at a time when Bolsonaro is trying to tie the president to the issue, the adviser said.

Bolsonaro, who for months struggled to move past revelations that he sought money from Vorcaro for a film about his father, has by contrast been energized by the saga.

The senator has already renewed his calls for Moraes’ impeachment, a goal he’s put at the centre of his campaign from the start. His team is betting the crisis will deepen and believes Bolsonaro will be able to capitalise on it naturally, given that the court – and Moraes in particular – have long been the Bolsonaro family’s targets, according to a campaign aide.

The verdict may come down to Brazilian voters. Next month, they will also choose a new Senate, the only institution with the power to remove Supreme Court justices.

A conservative majority could put Moraes on a clear path toward impeachment, threatening to end his tenure and ushering the court into a new and potentially even more turbulent era.