First of all, judge Moro is a national hero, and recent polls still show him as the most admired public figure in the country. Leading operation Car Wash, he was responsible to (finally!) jail many of the most powerful politics and businessman in Brasil, due to disgusting corruption and shameless kickback schemes. All his convictions were backed by mountains and mountains of evidence, and upheld in at least 3 different upper courts, including our Supreme Court. There were more than 100 convictions from politics from the entire political spectrum by Judge Moro, from right to left.
Operation Car Wash has already recovered more than 8 Billion in assets stolen from public companies.
"His opponent" that you mentioned is President Lula, today recognized as the leader of a criminal organization that stole literally billions from Brazil. He currently serves a sentence from receiving a penthouse as bribe (there are even pictures of him inside the apartment, and the owner of the building company that built it testified about the whole scheme).
Trust me, jailing him was not easy, giving the enormous support he had due to him (or his political party) being in power from 2003-2016 (btw, during this time they also managed to destroy our economy - we'll end this decade as the worst in economical terms of the last 120 years).
The are other 8 criminal lawsuits against former president Lula, and he has already been convicted (by a different Judge) in another one about "the ranch in Atibaia", which he also denied being his, even tough prosecution proved it was actually received by him as bribe: the place had paddle boats with the names of his grandsons, the master bedroom had all his wife's medicines on the counter top and even dinner tables had their names engraved, there were even regular e-mails from the manager of the ranch to the president updating him with the most detailed events... there's a 20 page PDF by our FBI with pictures of all the evidence.
About the alleged collusion between Judge Moro and the prosecution, you just need to read the Intercept messages by yourself to see that absolutely nothing wrong happened there. It's normal for the Judge to talk with the prosecution in a criminal case, as he needs to collect opinions before his rulings.
What happened in Brazil is that a "crazy judge" and some "crazy prosecutors" decided to change the "status quo" and finally put an end to the shameless multi-billion stealing that was going on for the last decade, lead by former president Lula and his political associates. If you think these Judges and Prosecutors would achieve those results without a lot of backing from the public opinion, you must only be naive. Some of those messages show exactly that: Judge and Prosecutor talking about how shadowy manouvers to discredit the operation needed to be brought to light so the public could protest and react and prevent them. Extra credit to them for doing that and going the extra mile, all within the law.
After President Bolsonaro was elected, he invited Judge Moro to talk, and he accepted to leave the Judiciary Branch to serve as Minister of Justice, and he'll probably be appointed to be a Supreme Court Justice when the next position opens (Bolsonaro will be able to appoint 2 seats during his term, during to retirements). Props to Bolsonaro for doing that.
After all these messages came out between Moro and Prosecution were published (all criminally obtained by a Hacker, I must point out), Judge Moro put it best: "parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus".
Lula, who will soon answer for even more corruption charges, was judged by 3 tiers of Brazil's law system, including their "Supreme Court".
Just ask yourselves: why would the owner of Odebrecht, a company that had a revenue of 45 billion USD in 2018, confess under oath that his company had corrupt deals with Lula's party when Lula was the party leader?
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39194395
The Intercept is only releasing small disconnected parts of the recordings that can be milked for clicks. They never released in full and don't plan to. Moro already asked The Intercept to release the conversations in full, in vain it seems.
Judge sends political adversary to prison
Judge now minister in current administration, arguably in power due to his imprisoning the aforementioned political adversary
The sentence was appealed many times all the way up to the Supreme Court and along the way, other Judges not only agreed that Lula is a criminal but also increased his initial sentence.
It is virtually impossible to defend Lula. There is enough proof out there to back this.
No. What I am questioning the the timeline of events, that fit too conveniently for the current president and the judge, that is now a minister.
I hope this clarifies your confusion.
Makes perfect sense, that judge is a national hero.
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/15/watch-glenn-greenwald-ex...
edit: corrected WhatsApp to Telegram.
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-lula-operation-ca...