Misleading: It is a misleading video in which a supporter of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) claims that the “TSE admits that the PCC has a connection with Lula’s PT”. A decision by the Court, published on August 20, 2022, denied a request by the Workers’ Party for Bolsonaro to delete from his social media posts that accuse Lula and the PT of having a relationship with the criminal group. Bolsonaro reproduces an excerpt from a TV Record report, aired on August 9, 2019, in which there is audio of telephone interception made by the Federal Police (PF), in the context of Operation Cravada (2019). Responsible for the decision, Minister Maria Claudia Bucchianeri stated that she did not make a value judgment on the content of the audio when deciding.
Investigated Content: In video on youtube entitled “TSE admits that the PCC does have a connection with LULA’s PT”, candidate for federal deputy for the PL in Goiás states that the minister of the Superior Electoral Court Maria Claudia Bucchianeri “realized that saying this is not fake news” in reference to an alleged link between the Workers’ Party and the PCC.
where it was published: YouTube
Completion of Proof: A video that claims that the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) admitted that the PT has links with the criminal organization Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) is misleading. Court minister Maria Claudia Bucchianeri only denied a PT request to force President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to delete some Twitter posts in which former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the PT are associated with the PCC. However, in the decision, there is no judgment as to whether the association is true or false.
Bolsonaro’s posts cite a telephone intercept made by the Federal Police in 2019. The minister confirmed that the excerpt is authentic, having even been published in several media at the time. She added, however, that she did not make a value judgment on the content when deciding. According to her, the audio shared by Bolsonaro has as its substance the replication of journalistic material, whose content, at the time (2019), was massively publicized by vehicles of recognized credibility.
misleading, for Comprova, is content taken from the original context and used in another so that its meaning undergoes changes; that uses inaccurate data or that leads to an interpretation different from the author’s intention; content that confuses, with or without the deliberate intent to cause harm.
Scope of publication: The video, published on YouTube on August 20, 2022, has over 279,000 views and over 3,300 comments as of August 26, 2022.
What the author of the publication says: The Comprova team made contact with the author of the publication through two different email addresses available on their networks, as well as through their profile on Instagram, but received no response.
How do we check: The first action was to verify if, in fact, the CNN Brasil report cited by the author of the video was true and if the excerpt used in the video coincided with the one published on the broadcaster’s website. From then on, we evaluated the publications of other press vehicles that also addressed the subject (Brazil Agency, Legal Adviser, Sheet, Power 360). We sought, therefore, the full text of the decision published on August 20, available on the website Power 360to compare the original content with the arguments used by the author of the video.
Minister of the TSE did not evaluate the content of the content
At decision released on August 20, at no time does the minister Maria Claudia Bucchianeri suggest or acknowledge a connection between the PT and the criminal organization PCC, contrary to what the author of the analyzed video claims.
The denial regarding the request to remove posts made by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) on his Twitter account is supported by the understanding that the video shared on the social network has as its substance the replication of journalistic material, whose content, at the time (2019), it was massively guided by vehicles of recognized credibility. It should also be noted that the contents are still available for access on the internet.
The excerpt from the telephone intercept shared by Bolsonaro is part of a 2019 PF report, within the scope of “Operação Cravada”. The action aimed to dismantle the financial core of a criminal faction operating in the states of Paraná, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Mato Grosso do Sul, Acre and Roraima. In the intercept, one of the members of the PCC says that he had dialogues with members of the PT. However, the investigation did not prove whether such conversations had taken place.
The minister is also emphatic in stating – emphasizing in bold – that the decision “does not mean, I insist, that I am confirming the veracity or not of what was said by the intercepted person”.
And he adds: “It just means that the interception took place and generated numerous journalistic articles, all still on the air, which makes it legal, as I understand it, to create political narratives that must be neutralized and refuted within the political dialogue”.
According to the judge, it would be different, “if the political narrative were being constructed from an untrue fact or seriously decontextualized”. In this case, she says, the Electoral Court should intervene “in order to avoid inducing the voter in error, based on political criticism based on lies”.
Representation cites “malicious narrative” and “anticipated advertising”
The PT’s representation against Bolsonaro is based on the assumption that the president, through his Twitter profile, “shared and promoted disinformation” by relating the party and Lula to the PCC.
For the PT, this is a “malicious and uninformative narrative” and “anticipated negative propaganda”, with the aim of consequently attacking the candidate’s image. The caption asks the Justice to determine the removal of the content from the air, in addition to alerting the represented about the possibility of a fine, to be defined by the Court itself, if other publications of the same content are made.
The content of Bolsonaro’s publications
The request lists three posts made by the President of the Republic on July 19, 2022, two days after the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes determine the removal of posts by dozens of pages, profiles and channels that made a false association between former president Lula, the PT and the PCC. Moraes’ decision, at the time, affected specific content published by allies of the president, such as deputies Hélio Lopes (PL-RJ) and Carla Zambelli (PL-SP), in addition to the senator and son of the chief executive, Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-SP). -RJ).
1st publication – Bolsonaro shares an excerpt from an article published by TV Record in 2019, which cites an excerpt from an intercept carried out by the PF, and which appears in the Operation Cravada report. In this one, a member of the criminal faction says that “with the PT we had dialogue. The PT had a long dialogue with us”. The statement was made in a statement by the criminal in which he challenged the rigidity of the federal government’s measures against organized crime, especially the transfer of faction leaders to federal prisons. The content posted by the president is followed by the caption: “Leader of a criminal faction (irraaa) complains about Jair Bolsonaro and reveals that the Party of (iirrruuuuuuu) the dialogue with organized crime was ‘cabulous’”.
2nd publication – Bolsonaro’s profile adds a new comment to the previous content: “It is the group that practices illicit activities coordinated by the sixteenth and third letter of the alphabet with nostalgia for the group of the cephalopod invertebrate animal belonging to the phylum of molluscs”.
3rd publication – Bolsonaro made yet another post saying: “In 2018, Lula’s appointee won by a long shot in prisons; In 2019, a PCC leader complained about our attitude towards the group and said that with the PT, dialogue was much better. It is not me, but organized crime itself that demonstrates that it has him as an ally and me as an enemy”.
The president’s posts, at the time, were recorded in several journalistic vehicles, with content almost always titled “Bolsonaro ignores Moraes and associates PT with the PCC on the networks” or some variation – Capital Letter, the antagonist, GZH, Core, The State of São Paulo.
The association between the PT, Lula and the PCC has as one of the bases the plea bargain of the former treasurer of the party, publicist Marcos Valério. Valério’s testimony took place in 2017, in Minas Gerais. The subject gained visibility again on July 1, 2022, after a report by the Look publish excerpts of testimony in which the publicist claims to have heard from a PT leader how the alleged relationship between the party and the criminal faction worked.
In the excerpt published by the magazine, Valério states that former PT Secretary General Sílvio Pereira told him that businessman Ronan Maria Pinto threatened to reveal that the PT received money from bus companies, clandestine transport operators and bingo money for the CCP. The money would be financing PT campaigns.
In day July 17, Moraes ordered the removal of news considered false that relate the PCC criminal faction to the PT and the murder of the then mayor of Santo André (SP), Celso Daniel (PT), in 2002.
in the decision, Moraes mentions that “as is public and well-known knowledge, the murder of former mayor Celso Daniel is a case closed before the Judiciary, with the responsible duly prosecuted and judged, serving a sentence”.
The minister also mentions that the Public Ministry of São Paulo has definitively closed the investigations, with no news of the involvement of the Workers’ Party or its members.
The author of the publication
Gustavo Gayer Machado de Araújo, known on social media as Gustavo Gayer (PL), is a candidate for federal deputy for the state of Goiás and a supporter of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL). According to information recorded in the disclosecand2022, is a businessman and is 41 years old. In 2020, he ran for mayor of Goiânia, when he got 45,928 votes.
In addition to the YouTube channel, created in 2016, Gayer extends his social media activities to Instagram (343,000 followers), Facebook (271,000 followers) and Twitter, where his account is currently blocked for violating the platform’s rules.
This month, Projeto Comprova denied another video by Gayer, in which he said that Lula would have said that he will implement a dictatorship in Brazil if elected.
why do we investigate: Comprova investigates suspicious content that went viral on social media about the pandemic, public policies of the federal government and presidential elections. In the case discussed here, the publication cites misleading information that can lead voters to a misunderstanding in the electoral dispute. Pieces of disinformation like this hinder the process because they deceive the population, who must make their choice based on true and reliable data.
Other checks on the topic: Comprova has already carried out different checks involving the TSE. In one of them, it was proved that the company hired by the court had no connection with PT. In another, Comprova’s analysis concluded that it was false content stating that the TSE has 32,000 stapled polls. Recently, it was also checked that the vote counting is done by the body itself and not by an outsourced company, as post said. A check on the alleged association between PT and PCC was also carried out by the to the factswho also bought the information to be false.
Investigated by: Correio, Imirante.com, Norte de Notícias and Correio, Portal de Carajás; Verified by: Estado de S.Paulo, Metrópoles, Plural Curitiba, O Dia, Correio Braziliense, Piauí, O Popular, SBT, SBT News, GaúchaZH, Folha de S.Paulo and A Gazeta.
Source: CNN Brasil
