Corruption

Edward Snowden: Trump has created a global playbook to attack those revealing uncomfortable truths

On Tuesday, Brazilian federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and founding editor at the Intercept Brazil, for his explosive reporting on corruption at the very highest levels of Brazil’s government.

The public importance of these stories was staggering. For example, one of the revelations exposed how a well-known judge named Sergio Moro had rigged a trial to jail the country’s most popular political figure in the run-up to the presidential election, clearing a path to victory for Jair Bolsonaro, who then promptly rewarded Moro with control of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security.

Given this context, it’s understandable why a significant portion of Brazilian politicians — including even some aligned with the disgraced Bolsonaro regime — have chosen to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with press freedom organizations in denouncing these preposterous “cybercrime” charges as an act of political repression.