After writing last week of the alleged Brazilian deep state’s attempt to bring down a duly-elected president, we received vast amounts of social media engagement, mostly on the positive side, thanking us for highlighting this phenomenon in-country that is being directed against populist candidates across the West and now the world.

Of course, the Brazilian media went crazy, accusing us of lying, and being a creator of ‘fake news’, when all we did was describe the blog post of journalist Jawad Rhalib that was there for the world to see (and listen to the audio tapes) to make their own conclusions. It is an interesting thing to be called a liar for pointing out what is out there on the internet for public consumption.  

Even Reuters put out a piece on how President Bolsanaro was “rebuked” for “false accusations” against the reporter who was recorded stating she received illegal documents from Brazil’s Council for Financial Activities Control (COAF) and that the documents were leaked prior to the inauguration (she admits a year after they were in possession of COAF) in order to damage his presidency. The rebuke of course came from the Brazilian Bar Association and an investigative journalist association, not known for their conservative, or populist, credentials.  

It all sounds very familiar to what has been going on in the United States.  

The blog post has now been removed for ‘not respecting the participation charter’ of Mediapart.  

Interestingly enough,the online attacks did not contradict the fact that the audio tapes were the real voice of Brazilian journalist Constanca Rezende, who had broken the story in the Brazilian press after being leaked the documents. The attacks did not contradict the fact that COAF had leaked the documents just prior to the inauguration, after holding them a year. 

The audio tapes did show her pride in “getting the investigation started” against President Bolsanaro by putting the story out to the public right before the start of the Bolsanaro presidency and her perception of the seriousness of the charges. In broken English, she describes how she wrote about the case as it would be “devastating” for Bolsanaro and an “impeachment case.” In other words, she broke the story in order to bring down the president after his unexpected election.  

As with Tucker Carlson being attacked in the U.S. for having the guts to speak out against the repression of free speech and the Deep State attacks against President Trump, instead of supporting the free release of information and letting the public make its own decisions, the anger was directed at us, the messenger, for having the gall to allow the public to be aware of the information in the first place.  

Then the blog post was taken down.  

This type of behavior makes very clear the agenda of those behind the attacks on President Bolsanaro.  

Originally posted at The Washington Times