Exactly one month before Brazil holds its presidential election, the country is drowning in a corruption scandal and institutional civil war, the gravity of which is impossible to overstate. At the center of it is Brazil’s authoritarian and increasingly unhinged Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who was sanctioned by the U.S. as a human rights abuser in 2025 after he banned X from Brazil for one month over its refusal to censor at his behest, then ordered money removed from Starlink’s accounts to pay for X’s fines.
While polls all year have shown that the incumbent left-wing president, 80-year-old Lula da Silva, has a modest lead to win his fourth term, more recent polls have shown him tied with his primary adversary, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, now imprisoned for 28 years by Judge Moraes on charges of plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula.
Despite once being affiliated with the center-right, Moraes has become Lula’s closest and most important ally, and the left’s most beloved hero. For that reason, Moraes’ exploding scandal can only further weaken Lula heading into the election. Other than Uruguay, Brazil is the last country in South America still governed by a left-wing or center-left government, with one country after another electing leaders on the right: Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, etc.
Moraes’ conduct is so unprecedentedly sleazy and corrupt that it is difficult to report without provoking understandable doubt. How could it be possible that a democratic country is tolerating, for even one day, a Supreme Court judge remaining in power if his personal corruption and grave abuses of power are really this manifest? Over the past 48 hours, Brazil’s leading newspapers, previously virtually unanimous in their support of Moraes, have demanded his immediate resignation.
At the center of the scandal is a collapsed, fraudulent bank called Banco Master. In 2025, the Central Bank ordered its liquidation after it was revealed to be essentially a Ponzi scheme funding the libertine, Dubai- and Miami-based billionaire lifestyle of its Brazilian president, Daniel Vorcaro. It quickly became the worst banking loss in Brazil’s history by far, with estimated losses of at least $40 billion. Vorcaro was arrested last November at São Paulo’s international airport as he tried to board his private jet to Dubai to flee justice.
The bank’s collapse, Vorcaro’s arrest, and the ensuing criminal investigation have produced a tsunami of evidence showing how Vorcaro — as he was stealing from depositors, including retirees and civil servants — was secretly shoveling huge sums of money and other assets of value to Brazil’s leading politicians and judges, on both the left and right, with the expectation of protection. One of those most enriched by Banco Master is Lula’s longtime Workers’ Party ally in the Senate, Jaques Wagner; Vorcaro also furnished large sums to the Bolsonaro family, including to Flavio, nominally to finance a film about the former president.
But nobody has been as enriched — or as implicated — by Vorcaro and Banco Master as Justice Moraes. Late last year, Brazil’s Globo media empire — for years Moraes’ loyal supporter — revealed that the bank had given an undisclosed 18-month contract to Moraes’ wife worth $27 million.
While Moraes’ wife is an attorney, and the obscene sums under the contract were for “legal services,” she is an ordinary and mediocre one at best. Even Brazil’s best and largest law firms said that such a sum would be unthinkable for vague “legal services,” let alone that kind of generational wealth paid to the small family law firm composed of Moraes’ wife and their two lawyer children. In other words, there would be no rational reason why this bank would enter into such a lavish multi-million dollar contract with Moraes’ wife absent an agreement to secure the influence and protection of her very powerful husband.
More incriminating revelations about Moraes came fast and furious in the first two months of the year. He called the Central Bank to intervene on behalf of the corrupt bank that had just bestowed on him generational wealth. He and Vorcaro were communicating with each other in the days leading up to Vorcaro’s arrest. At least $17 million had been paid by the bank to Moraes’ wife under the original contract. Facing intense public pressure, she could not provide any documentation or explanation of what “legal services” she furnished that would remotely justify this bizarre contract.
In the face of all these media reports, Moraes denied essentially everything. Even though Globo had the text messages between him and Vorcaro, verified by the Federal Police, he simply lied and said they were not on his phone. That had the effect of somewhat stifling the scandal — until this week, when it exploded in a way that few scandals have.
When the Banco Master criminal case first arrived at the Supreme Court, it was conveniently assigned to a judge who had as much incentive as Moraes to hide it all. That judge immediately put the entire case under “absolute secrecy,” meaning nothing would be disclosed to the public. But when it was revealed that this judge and his family had their own massive, hidden financial ties to Vorcaro and the bank, he was forced to step aside, and the case was then randomly reassigned to Justice André Mendonça, one of only two judges on the 11-member court appointed by Bolsonaro.
Last week, Vorcaro told Mendonça that he was being physically and psychologically tortured in prison and threatened with death at the hands of the Lula-appointed head of the Federal Police. Mendonça thus ordered the Federal Police to turn over to him the results of their investigation into Vorcaro’s communications with anyone on the Supreme Court or Federal Police. On Monday, key excerpts of the 218-page report on Moraes’ genuinely shocking behavior, and then the full report itself, were disclosed by the daily newspaper Estadão.
Among the revelations: the wealth lavished on the Moraes family by Vorcaro was not limited to a $27 million contract, but also included a separate $10 million contract for his wife, free use of Vorcaro’s private jets and helicopters, and even credit cards for each of their children with a monthly limit of $70,000, with a total value of close to $40 million. Over the last two years, the Moraes family has acquired a virtual real estate empire, including a new $3.5 million mansion in the nation’s capital, Brasília, as well as other residences.
Just as one would expect, the generational wealth bestowed on the Moraes family from Vorcaro and the bank’s stolen deposits was not for free. Moraes was expected to do a great deal for the corrupt billionaire, and he did.
When conversing via WhatsApp, Moraes and Vorcaro both sent their messages using the app’s “one-time visualization” feature to ensure that their messages would be destroyed after they were read once. In several cases over which he presided, Moraes himself has classified the use of this feature as intentional obstruction of justice when he cited it to justify sending people to prison before trial.
Unfortunately for Moraes, the Federal Police were able to recover Vorcaro’s deleted messages to him (but not yet Moraes’ texts to Vorcaro, because they have not yet seized Moraes’ phone). Those recovered deleted messages show Vorcaro speaking extensively with Moraes about how he could escape and/or block prosecution, including asking Moraes about which dates he should flee the country to avoid imminent arrest, along with extensive discussions about Moraes’ efforts to have the chief prosecutor and the head of the Federal Police block criminal investigations. In several messages, Vorcaro proclaimed himself to be “in debt for life” to Moraes and with “life-long gratitude” to the judge for everything he did for him.
And, of course, Vorcaro appeared to have known exactly when the police were coming for him since they arrested him at the airport as he tried to flee to Dubai. Just two weeks ago, Moraes, along with the rest of the Supreme Court, ordered two Rio de Janeiro politicians indicted and arrested for having allegedly leaked details of an imminent police operation in advance to arrest criminals with whom they are associated.
Some of Moraes’ efforts to reward Vorcaro and the bank for the generational wealth bestowed on his family were out in the open. In one case highlighted by CNN Brasil, Moraes used his power as a Supreme Court judge to pause a criminal case against the bank that threatened its value, doing so shortly after the bank signed the $27 million contract with Moraes’ wife.
With these facts confirmed, this is about as clear-cut a case of proven abuse of power and massive corruption as one can imagine. On top of all of that, this shows that Moraes lied constantly to the public when denying these interactions when they were first reported: a rather significant finding given that he has been censoring and even imprisoning political enemies of Lula’s government and his own critics for years by accusing them of spreading “fake news.”
But one does not acquire and exercise authoritarian power for years without a network of powerful enablers and an entrenched tyrannical mindset that believes any criticism, questioning, or challenge of his power is, by definition, criminal. And Moraes, as he has done for years, is now insisting that the real criminal is not himself but the person who caused his conduct to be revealed to the public: in this case, his own colleague on the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, Moraes issued an order essentially putting Judge Mendonça under criminal investigation for “abuse of power.” Moraes’ allies in the Brazilian Senate, controlled by its Moraes-allied president, have long blocked impeachment attempts against Moraes but are now insisting that Judge Mendonça should be impeached for bringing to light this extraordinary wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Lula — desperate to distance himself from the incomparable sleaze of his closest judicial ally, but also afraid of what they will do to him if he publicly sides against them — has been left to read incoherent and painfully vague statements from a teleprompter filled with meaningless bromides about how nobody is above the law. One strong weapon of leverage Moraes and his allies hold over Lula’s head is that Lula’s son is enmeshed in an extremely serious corruption scandal involving his alleged trading of influence for lobbyist profit, which Lula’s party is desperately trying to suppress until after the election.
What has happened here is a lesson for all Western democracies. The Brazilian establishment purposely vested Moraes with unlimited and unconstitutional powers in the name of “saving democracy” from Bolsonaro. They watched for years, with some growing discomfort, as Moraes went further and further in his authoritarian zeal. They assumed — or at least hoped — that once the Bolsonaro movement was smashed and prevented from contesting future elections, Moraes would then voluntarily return those powers and everything would return to normal.
But anyone with an even fleeting knowledge of history, or human nature, would have known that this would not have happened. Many of us spent years warning that these “emergency powers” would become permanent, citing the model of post-9/11 “emergency powers” in the U.S. that are now permanent. But all to no avail: Moraes was too valuable to try to rein him in any way.
So, now, the establishment forces in media and politics that created this tyrannical Frankenstein are trying to do everything possible to constrain their monster. But in many ways, he has become far more powerful than his creators. He is also clearly inebriated with his own power and righteousness, making him willing to do literally anything to preserve it and ensure his survival. All of this is leaving the outcome of this remarkable scandal, the ensuing constitutional crisis, and even Brazilian democracy itself very much in doubt.
Three other points:
(1) As noted, polls in Brazil basically now show a tie between Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro in the expected run-off election between the two. Kalshi has begun to reflect the rapidly changing expectations;
(2) I was on Piers Morgan’s program this week to discuss a wide range of issues, including the Iran War. You can watch that here.
(3) We conducted our live weekly Q&A last night, as we always (or almost always) do on Thursday night, where we respond to and interact with the questions, comments, and critiques of our subscribers. You can watch that here.
Moraes' corruption is cartoonishly grand in scope. He's like a Bond villain, but in real life. Wild. Hope the Brazilians can figure it out and rein in his powers.
Despite being a gringo, your voice has been an important and positive influence in Brazilian politics. For the last five years Justice Moraes benefitted from the attempt by globalists in the Biden Admin and EU to turn Brazil into a ‘dictatorship of the judiciary’, making future elections irrelevant. Hopefully, exposing Moraes’ massive corruption will turn Brazil back toward a genuine democracy where elections truly matter.