The Lava Jato operation is inseparable from Moro's parliamentary mandate (and Dallagnol's as well!).

The great effort of former judge and current senator Sérgio Moro is focused not on engaging in politics in a constructive and healthy way, but on defending himself against past diatribes. And no wonder. Sérgio Moro, like his partner in the Public Prosecutor's Office, Deltan Dallagnol, is nothing more than a tedious bureaucrat, lacking command of speech and even less of rhetoric, and possessing no social charisma whatsoever. He only won his parliamentary mandate because of his media-savvy performance as a "vigilante" magistrate in Operation Lava Jato.

Without Lava Jato, therefore, the former judge would still be officiating in the judiciary, with tedious rulings and clumsy judgments, without the slightest chance of gaining notoriety. Perhaps he would even achieve slight notoriety, maybe with some disciplinary complaint before the National Council of Justice. More than that, certainly not.

But Sérgio Moro preferred simony. He sold his jurisdiction to the most base partisan politics. And the plan, albeit clumsy in his own style, worked. He arrived in the Senate as "Judge Sérgio Moro" in his electoral campaign, even though he was no longer a judge, having relinquished his position in exchange for the Justice portfolio in the Bolsonaro government, in a maneuver that revealed his personal objective: to reach true power (not the kind that involves ordering the bailiff to notify the parties of their moldy and dusty cases).

As a senator, he now enjoys privileged jurisdiction, or "prerogative of office," in more technical terms. It is a corollary of parliamentary immunity to protect himself from lower court judges who, like him, seek to gain notoriety at the expense of destroying the reputation of famous people. Strictly speaking, only the Supreme Federal Court can deal with him. Not his potential alter-egos.

But, curiously, Sérgio Moro dismisses the prerogative, as if he could dispose of it. He relies on a jurisprudential interpretation, according to which the special jurisdiction would be restricted to acts committed in the exercise of and in connection with the mandate, but not those prior to it. Certainly, his partner Dallagnol also uses this argument. And why is that?

Because today, with the ill-fated show operation buried, there are judges in Curitiba. The search is focused on understanding the tactical motivations behind each decision made by the politically motivated magistrate. And the search for tactical reasons cannot be separated from the strategic one: to gain power.

Behold, ghosts from the past reappear before the senator. Lawyer Tacla Durán has much to say and desperately wants to rebuild his tarnished reputation. Seeing this effort as a risk to his political project, Moro wants the Regional Federal Court, where he has friends, to confiscate the pen from the correct magistrate, due to his alleged bias in granting the desired clarification after being prompted by a party.

Moro does not deny having an interest in obstructing judicial action aimed at clarifying the facts. The right thing to do would be for him to insist strongly on this clarification, because if he had a clear conscience, he would be the first to want to distance himself from any accusation that might weigh on him—that of having unjustly destroyed Tacla Durán's reputation. But one cannot expect so much from Moro. He wants to sabotage the process.

This explains his aversion to the Supreme Federal Court (STF), to which the judge from Curitiba, provoked by Durán, referred the imbroglio. The same STF had already identified the disastrous (to say the least) actions of Sérgio Moro, declaring him biased due to his animosity towards President Lula. There, the former judge fools no one.

That is precisely why the Supreme Federal Court (STF) must assert its jurisdiction. After all, the context is the same: to become a senator, Moro used his position. His self-serving actions in the first instance are inseparable from the mandate he currently holds.

There is no exaggeration now in linking potential past wrongdoings of the former judge to his current exercise of his parliamentary mandate. Even if the jurisprudential limitation is accepted, any acts committed by Judge Moro were teleologically directed at Senator Moro's mandate. And, declaring himself a party – only in this way would he be legitimately entitled to raise an objection of bias against the diligent judge from Curitiba – his claim should be decided by the Supreme Federal Court.

Judge Moro and Senator Moro are one and the same. And the Regional Federal Court, where the father of Moro's son-in-law and business partner works, should refrain from helping to derail Tacla Durán's request. Now there are judges in Brasília as well.