After publishing a series of exposés revealing that Brazilian prosecutors conspired against former President Lula de Silva’s election bid last year, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald has been threatened with deportation from Brazil.
Parliamentarian and member of the ruling Social Liberal (PSL) party Carlos Jordy tweeted out the thinly-veiled threat on Thursday in a string of messages.
“You can not confront our institutions and authorities, committing crimes against national security and not imagine that [you] can be criminally punished and DEPORTED,” the lawmaker said, adding “your case is already being investigated.”
Greenwald replied to the threat Friday afternoon with a Twitter thread of his own, denouncing Jordy’s warning and suggesting he had no plans to leave the country anytime soon.
Democracies do not ‘deport’ journalists for doing journalism.
“I have been living in Brazil since 2005. I have been married for 14 years with a Brazilian and adopted 2 Brazilian children,” Greenwald said. “I invested my life in the future of Brazil.”
Greenwald’s husband David Miranda, is an opposition lawmaker.
Since the publication of the series in the Intercept, Greenwald said he and his family have also received “grotesque” threats of violence from private citizens in Brazil, presumably supporters of the PSL and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
While Greenwald told AFP that he expected to generate animosity and threats for reporting “on very powerful figures who are part of the Bolsonaro government,” the journalist emphasized that he takes such threats very seriously.
Also on rt.com Leaked documents show politicized targeting of Brazil’s ex-president by prosecutors, judgeThe Intercept exposés, based on a sizable archive of leaked communications, indicate that ostensibly apolitical prosecutors worked in tandem to disqualify former Brazilian President Lula de Silva out of last year’s presidential election, clearing the way for Bolsonaro’s eventual victory. Known as ‘Operation Car Wash,’ the scandal has implicated figures across the political spectrum in Brazil and Latin America more broadly.
The leaks have significant potential to undermine Bolsonaro’s government, as he has since appointed one of the prosecutors caught up in the scandal, Sergio Moro, to the position of justice minister.
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